Python help command

Question

How can Python's help information on a given module/function be obtained?

For example, to obtain information on scipy's chi2, the following commands:

>> from scipy.stats import chi2
>> help(chi2.pdf)

provide only general help:

Help on method pdf in module scipy.stats.distributions:

pdf(self, x, *args, **kwds) method of scipy.stats.distributions.chi2_gen instance

Probability density function at x of the given RV.

etc.

How can the specific details be obtained? In this example something like:

The function call is chi2.pdf(x, v) with v degrees of freedom.

Answer 1

The help() function only displays the docstring of the object you're calling it on. If that object doesn't have one (or one that doesn't contain the information you're after), you will need to look at the documentation of the module/function/object you're using.