Edexcel S3 — Question 8

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS3 (Statistics 3)
TopicChi-squared distribution

8. A physicist believes that the number of particles emitted by a radioactive source with a long half-life can be modelled by a Poisson distribution. She records the number of particles emitted in 80 successive 5-minute periods and her results are shown in the table below.
No. of Particles012345 or more
No. of Intervals233214830
  1. Comment on the suitability of a Poisson distribution for this situation.
  2. Show that an unbiased estimate of the mean number of particles emitted in a 5 -minute period is 1.2 and find an unbiased estimate of the variance.
  3. Explain how your answers to part (b) support the fitting of a Poisson distribution.
  4. Stating your hypotheses clearly and using a \(5 \%\) level of significance, test whether or not these data can be modelled by a Poisson distribution. END