R: Rutherford-Geiger Polonium Data

ruge {VGAM} | R Documentation

## 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

### 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.

### Source

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

### 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))))

[Package VGAM version 1.1-3 Index]