An experiment has been developed for the intermediate physics laboratory in which the students use a microcomputer to investigate statistics and errors. A multichannel scaler is used to collect distributions of events per unit time from a radioactive source, and the data are stored on computer diskettes. Students write programs to calculate properties such as the mean and standard deviation of each distribution, and combine data sets in various ways in order to investigate how errors (standard deviations) are propagated.
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© 1987 American Association of Physics Teachers.
1987
American Association of Physics Teachers
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