OCR S3 2011 June — Question 4

Exam BoardOCR
ModuleS3 (Statistics 3)
Year2011
SessionJune
TopicChi-squared distribution

4 An experiment by Lord Rutherford at Cambridge in 1909 involved measuring the numbers of \(\alpha\)-particles emitted during radioactive decay. The following table shows emissions during 2608 intervals of 7.5 seconds.
Number of particles emitted, \(x\)012345678910\(\geqslant 11\)
Frequency572033835255324082731394527106
It is given that the mean number of particles emitted per interval, calculated from the data, is 3.87 , correct to 3 significant figures.
  1. Find the contribution to the \(\chi ^ { 2 }\) value of the frequency of 273 corresponding to \(x = 6\) in a goodness of fit test for a Poisson distribution.
  2. Given that no cells need to be combined, state why the number of degrees of freedom is 10 .
  3. Given also that the calculated value of \(\chi ^ { 2 }\) is 13.0 , correct to 3 significant figures, carry out the test at the 10\% significance level.