VGAM (version 1.0-2)

ruge: Rutherford-Geiger Polonium Data

Description

Decay counts of polonium recorded by Rutherford and Geiger (1910).

Usage

data(ruge)

Format

This data frame contains the following columns:

counts

a numeric vector, counts or frequencies

number

a numeric vector, the number of decays

Source

Rutherford, E. and Geiger, H. (1910) The Probability Variations in the Distribution of alpha Particles, Philosophical Magazine, 20, 698--704.

Details

These are the radioactive decay counts of polonium recorded by Rutherford and Geiger (1910) representing the number of scintillations in 2608 1/8 minute intervals. For example, there were 57 frequencies of zero counts. The counts can be thought of as being approximately Poisson distributed.

Examples

lambdahat <- with(ruge, weighted.mean(number, w = counts))
(N <- with(ruge, sum(counts)))
with(ruge, cbind(number, counts,
                 fitted = round(N * dpois(number, lam = lambdahat))))