10 Probabilities and errors
On revision of this section and completion of these exercises you should be able to:
- define the probability distribution function
- define and calculate the values: mean, variance and standard deviation
- define the Gaussian distribution
- define the Poisson distribution
- calculate the probability of events within a Poisson distribution
- describe the circumstances in which a Poisson distribution may approach a Gaussian curve
- define the term error and explain how errors are propagated
- calculate the standard error of the mean
- explain how systematic errors can be accommodated when quoting measurements
- use least squares fitting to determine the slope of the line of best fit.
