[neutron-mc] Statistical Errors question:

[Aaron M. Percival]

Hi all,

In section 4.2.1 of the McStas user manual makes the following statement:

"...we observe a large number of neutrons, N >= 10. Then N almost follows a
> normal distribution with the uncertainty sigma(N) = sqrt(N')."
>

Here N is the number of neutron counts in a particular bin of a monitor.

I was wondering why mathematically this is true.  Is it an application of
the Central Limit Theorem?

Any insight is appreciated,

Aaron

*************************************************
Aaron M. Percival
M.Sc. Candidate
Dept. of Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6
Office: 613-533-6000 ext. 74789
Fax: 613-533-6463
*************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman2.mcstas.org/pipermail/mcstas-users/attachments/20080602/4c88cdb7/attachment.html>