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More realistic populations

As was shown in the first part of the paper, of all possible populations, the most difficult to sample is a perfectly uniform distribution, where each age fraction is of the same size. It is sufficient to date k grains, according to Figure 3, Table 1 or the web-form [9], to reduce f and p to the desired levels. However, most naturally-occuring populations differ from the worst-case distribution and it is less likely that statistically significant fractions of such populations might be missed in a sample. As a consequence, fewer grains need dating to achieve the same levels of f and p. A number of numerically-generated random populations are discussed next, followed by some real detrital age-spectra.



Subsections

Pieter Vermeesch 2004-05-19