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I am doing a lab report for my Nuclear Detection class that requires a little bi

ID: 3043891 • Letter: I

Question

I am doing a lab report for my Nuclear Detection class that requires a little bit of statistical/data analysis which I am confused about. The professor is asking me to "Normalize the counting plateaus at the midpoint for both the alpha particle and beta particle counting curves. Re-plot as before." What does this mean? How would I normalize this portion of the curve? I have included the alpha particle and beta particle counting curves.

Alpha Particle Plateau

Beta Particle Plateau

3, 10,.00 10,00 pdo

Explanation / Answer

By seeing this two graphs we can identify that the data is not normal.

An informal approach to testing normality is to compare a histogram of the sample data to a normal probability curve. The empirical distribution of the data (the histogram) should be bell-shaped and resemble the normal distribution. This might be difficult to see if the sample is small.

A graphical tool for assessing normality is the normal probability plot, a quantile-quantile plot (QQ plot) of the standardized data against the standard normal distribution. Here the correlation between the sample data and normal quantiles (a measure of the goodness of fit) measures how well the data are modeled by a normal distribution. For normal data the points plotted in the QQ plot should fall approximately on a straight line, indicating high positive correlation. These plots are easy to interpret and also have the benefit that outliers are easily identified.

In order to transform a data in to normal one we use the methods like

1) logarithmic transformation

Procedure in SPSS Statistics

In the six steps that follow, a transformation using SPSS Statistics is performed on the following example data:

Data to Transform

36

32

45

41

29

22

18

36

10

40

Table:Data to enter into SPSS Statistics.

Rename the variable, "Data", instead of the default, "VAR00001

Click on Transform > Compute Variable... in the top menu

Transfer the Lg10 function into the Numeric Expression: box by pressing the Spss arrow up button.

Click the Data variable in the left-hand box and then click the SPSS right up button, which will result in the expression you see in the Numeric Expression: box below.

All you need to do now is give this new variable a name. We have called the new variable TrData. Type this name into the Target Variable: box in the top left-hand corner.

You will be presented with the SPSS Statistics Data Editor, which will now show the log transformed data under the new variable name "TrData" that you defined

Data to Transform

36

32

45

41

29

22

18

36

10

40

Table:Data to enter into SPSS Statistics.