Talk:Most probable number

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This article says absolutely nothing specific about this method. You can't even guess what this method is after reading this. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A guess is that the underlying model is a Poisson distribution, but the observations are either 0 for no events or 1 for one or more events and that "MPN" might actually refer to a maximum likelihood estimate. This would mean a binomial distribution with parameters related to those of the Poisson process. Unfortunately the reference now included is unlikely to be immediately to hand for most statisticians. Melcombe (talk) 08:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]