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EXPERIMENTS ON THE ACCURACY OF SURFACE DROP BACTERIAL COUNTS
Author(s) -
BADGER E. H. M.,
PANKHURST EILEEN S.
Publication year - 1960
Publication title -
journal of applied bacteriology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.889
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1365-2672
pISSN - 0021-8847
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2672.1960.tb00177.x
Subject(s) - poisson distribution , drop (telecommunication) , statistics , mathematics , constant (computer programming) , confidence interval , computer science , telecommunications , programming language
SUMMARY: A statistical experiment has shown that no significant proportion of the errors of determination of bacterial populations by the surface drop method could be attributed to the dropping technique employed. With both pure and mixed cultures the numbers of colonies/drop followed a Poisson distribution very closely. It is suggested that in order to determine bacterial populations at a consistent level of accuracy a constant number of colonies should be counted rather than a constant number of drops. Whenever it is justified, the confidence limits for the results of counts should be quoted.