statistics of distributions In general if you have a random variable Z that is a sum of two random variables X and Y the probability density function of the distribution of Z will be the convolution of those of the distributions of X and Y I have seen references to using deconvolution to estimate the distribution of the components from the distribution of their sum and presumably either the exact or estimated distribution of the other components or some assumptions about their nature Unfortunately I don t know enough about the subject to write any useful encyclopedic information about it