Rutherford-Geiger Polonium Data
Decay counts of polonium recorded by Rutherford and Geiger (1910).
data(ruge)
This data frame contains the following columns:
a numeric vector, counts or frequencies
a numeric vector, the number of decays
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.
Rutherford, E. and Geiger, H. (1910) The Probability Variations in the Distribution of alpha Particles, Philosophical Magazine, 20, 698–704.
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))))Please choose more modern alternatives, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.