Statistical Definition and 582 Threads

Problem statement: Of the letters in the word "POSSESSES", if you must choose 5 letters: a) How many possible combinations are there (of 5)? b) How many possible arrangements are there (of 5)? Given a word of n letters, where one of the letters is present 'a' times in the word and the...

Hi all, I'm an English major in an introductory statistics class that is required for my gen ed curriculum. Quite simply, there is a reason why I am not majoring in anything to do with numbers as I am awful at all of it. I have this probabilities problem that I have been staring at for an hour...

This topic is about history of physics so I decided to post it in general physics section but it would be nice to have a history of physics(or maybe science)section. Anyway,during my statistical mechanics course,I realized QM is being used from the beginning,in contrast to other parts of...

[hi] can you help me to solve these problems from statistical mechanics by pathria?? these problems are 7,8,11,13 and 14 in page 27 thank you

Author: Mark Tuckerman Title: Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Molecular Simulation Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198525265/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Author: Donald McQuarrie Title: Statistical Mechanics Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1891389157/?tag=pfamazon01-20

I need to find the statistical error in a counting experiment. Specifically, a decay can proceed via option A or option B and I need to find the branching ratio BR_a=(N_a)/(N_a+N_b). If I were to do this counting experiment multiple times my results for BR_a would follow the binomial...

Author: Frederick Reif Title: Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1577666127/?tag=pfamazon01-20 Prerequisities: Table of Contents: 1. Introduction to Statistical Methods Random Walk and Binomial Distribution / General Discussion...

Homework Statement Imagine a system with N distinguishable particles. Each particle may be in two states of energy: -ε and +ε. Find the the partition function of the system Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution I know that I have to find the partition function for a...

Homework Statement Imagine a system, in contact with a heat reservoir, with three particles. Each particle may be in a state of energy 0 or ε. What's the temperature of the reservoir such that the mean energy of the system, <E>, is 1.2ε? Homework Equations The Attempt at a...

I have gone through two volumes of Cohen (Quantum Mechanics). Now I need a book on Quantum Statistical Mechanics. The book should use axiomatic formulation using density matrix. Please give me a suggestion. ( I'm also introduced with 2nd quantization slightly) Thanks for any help in advance.

Homework Statement 1 kg of water with specific heat (C) of 4180 Joules /kg/degree is given at 0°C. It is taken to 100°C by two methods :- (i) by bringing it in contact with a reservoir at 100°C. (ii) by bringing it in contact with a reservoir at 50°C , and then with another reservoir at...

Homework Statement An isolated system has N=3 distinguishable particles A, B, C with single particle states equally spaced at intervalsof E and a total energy U=3E. ie the macrostate is defined by N=3, U=3E. The system has single particle levels 0, E, 2E, 3E. Homework Equations...

can someone please explain "Postulates of Classical Statistical Mechanics" , "priori probability" , "equilibrium" ..i m a post graduatation student .and in physics these chapters are seem very difficult i need some step by step explanation ..

I was wondering if it's common in undergraduate studies for statistical mechanics to be covered in the last 3-4 weeks of a thermodynamics course? I feel like the same is done for infinite series in a 2nd semester of calculus. Needless to say, both topics deserve much more time to fully do them...

I'm looking for a first-year graduate level stat mech textbook. What are the best ones out there?

Homework Statement I have a couple of notation interpretation questions: 1) What does f_X(x|θ) represent in this case? The realization function of of our random vector X for some value x and a parameter θ (so that if our random vector has n random variables, its realization vector will be a...

My advanced statistical mechanics prof told me that it wouldn't make any physical sense to allow N (the number of particles in a system) to be negative. But, somehow, I think that this possibility should be theoretically left open; perhaps there are some systems whose statistical behavior would...

Hello! I am using physical data to do an analysis (~30k measurements). These measurements include energies, momenta, angles... of particles. I am calculating a value (call it v) at the end after a lengthy process, and if I introduce all the data into my program I did, the result is v±σ...

I've been doing some cryptographic research in which I need to be able to assign "scores" to vectors of floating-point values. Each of these floating-point values is a log-likelihood ratio LLR(\hat{q}, p, q) where: \hat{q} is empirical data. The empirical data for element i in the vector is...

Hello. I am currently working on my master's thesis in entropy production in non-equilibrium systems using stochastic methods. I am also working on boosting my understanding of statistical physics by studying many different textbooks on the subject, and on related subjects such as...

Hi. I'm reading my third year of a Swedish engineering degree and we are about to read Statistical Mechanics. The scope of this course is Thermodynamics (although we have already had a small course in it), Statistical Mechanics and some Quantum statistics. The course book is "Concepts in...

Basically, I'm writing a story but I don't think this qualifies for the relevant board. So, I've got a scientist who's holed in a basement room of some university with his computer, and he presumably studies statistics of birds (or something, but using a computer). Is there a name for his job...

Hello,I'm studing the fundamental principles of statistical mechanics and I don't understand the "principle of equal a priory probabities" for this reason: the principle states that all states in the representative emsemble have the same probability which means that the density \rho(p,q) should...

Hi everyone, I've hit a bit of a snag with part c of this problem (can't figure out how to invert a function T(ν)), so I'm starting to question whether I have the previous parts correct. Homework Statement Consider a system of N identical but distinguishable particles, each of which has a...

Hello Everybody, I am working with Pathria to learn statistical mechanics, and in page 141 a quantity already defined in 129 makes a reappearance; it is the statistical weight factor. My question is, what is it? What does it mean? To be more precise, what does the following equation in...

Hi all, I am thinking of doing a PhD in theoretical statistical mechanics and would like to do it in Europe. I am having trouble finding institutes with a focus on SM or Physics/Mathematics departments strong in the field. Some guidance would be really appreciated. Thanks, and best...

I'm a junior chemical engineering major. How much overlap is there between stat mech and engineering theromdynamics? I was thinking about taking both next semester assuming they are not too similar. Are the topics different enough to warrant taking them at the same time?

I was reading introductory statistical mechanics. My final aim is to understand the cumulant and cluster expansions. The book I have is Atkins physical chemistry (I prefer it becuase it requires only a modest amount of statistics and probability). I got to the point where they derived the...

Hallo Everybody, I am following Professor Susskinds lectures on statistical mechanics, but can't find an appropriate book that is in line with what is presented in the lectures. Can anyone recommend a book that the lectures follow or which presents the same ideas as in the lectures? Your...

Homework Statement A set of telephone lines is to be installed so as to connect town A to town B. The town A has 2000 telephones. If each of the telephone users of A were to be guaranteed instant access to make calls to B, 2000 telephone lines would be needed. This would be rather extravagant...

Homework Statement A number is chosen at random between 0 and 1. What is the probability that exactly 5 of its first 10 decimal places consists of digits less than 5?Homework Equations Binomial Coefficient = \displaystyle \binom{N}{n1} Where n1 denotes "n1" objects of an indistinguishable type...

I'm taking Statistical Mechanics this semester. I already took Thermodynamics, covering the first three laws (0,1,2) at the level of Fermi's Thermodynamics book (and other similar ones). My Stat. Mech. teacher is a condensed matter experimentalist and he's boss at what he does, no question about...

Homework Statement From Hill's "Introduction to Statistical Thermodynamics", question 3-4 reads: (note "STR" denotes the case of most probable distribution and should be read as C*) Homework Equations The most probable distribution for a system of independent indistinguishable...

I have a data set consisting of ~10,000 patients. Each patient answered how often they had chocolate and we assigned the following values to their responses: Never= 0* 1-6 time per year = 0.01* 7-11 times per year = 0.028* 1 time per month = 0.033* 2-3 times per month = 0.08*...

I'm reading through Reif's "Statistical Mechanics" to prepare for the upcoming semester. Basically, a drunk guy takes N total steps, n1 to the right and n2 to the left. The probability that the current step will be to the right is "p," while the probability that the current step will be to the...

I have a number series ranked from largest to smallest in descending order from 10 - 1. the sample is assumed to be large enough to be normally distributed. If I pick say the 8th number from the top, which statistical test should I use to calculate the probability/C.I that the number picked is...

Heya Everybody, I've gots me sum boat loads of noisy spectroscopic data dat I've gots to sort thru. It's been a while since I've had to jackknife, bootstrap, or weiner filter anything. Can anyone recommend a book for refreshering me memory on these subjects? And any other techniques for...

Hi I wanted to get Pascal's law \Delta p= \rho g ( \Delta h) out of the context of statistical physics by the use of a partition function. I failed. Do you know how to solve this problem? Greetings

Hi, I'm looking for a good book on statistical mechanics (to go with a course) and I've been considereing Tolman's book http://books.google.be/books?id=4TqQZo962s0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Is this book still up to date with the quantum mechanics...

Hi guys, I am stuck with this problem... Please help! Define the rounding function [.] to integers as follows: [x] = j if x ∈ (j-0.5, j+0.5, for j = 0,+-1, +-2,... Suppose X has a uniform distribution on the interval (a,b). i.e., X~U(a,b) a<b. 1. find a pair a and b such hat...

Working on statistical physics i came across this expression: p = (1/44)^(10^5) = 10^(-164345) However TI-83 calculator is unable to verify it (gives answer 0). Can someone tell me how to get from (1/44)^(10^5) to 10^(-164345) analytically?

I see a lot of talk about QM, relativity, particle physics, classical mechanics, electrodynamics, etc. But I hardly see statistical mechanics (or pure thermodynamics, for that matter) related matters, beyond the pure basics, that is. What's the reason for this? Is it perceived to be less...

Hi! I'm newbie in Monte Carlo. My question concerns the statistical uncertainties of my simulations. Let's say that the result of my Monte Carlo is a certain distribution A (e.g. number of particles as a function of the depth in a target) and I have run NA events to generate that...

hi! i study statistical mechanics from this book at the moment and I'm a little bit confused somtimes. i thougt if anybody else is using this book, we could discuss and clarify confusions (or errata) here. please let me know if anyone is out there... greetings!

I am reading chapter three of Huang's Statistical Mechanics and I have a problem with equation (3.22). Having discussed the derivation of the classical cross section for a scattering process, Huang moves on to the quantum version of it. He states that in quantum mechanics the fundamental...

When we calculate the average of anything: we add up (or integrate) the sum{ [all the things were taking the average of] * [the probability of getting that thing ]}. The thing about the average I'm that curious about is for example: the average height of 5 people turns out to be say 6...

What will be a well recognized introductory book on statistical inverse problems, for undergraduate mathematicians and statisticians? The book should be written in elementary linear algebra and probability theories, i.e., no functional analysis, no measure theory, etc. Thank you.

Right now I have Schroeder, and I'm not a fan of it, despite some of the rave reviews I have read. I'm thinking I need another text to learn from while taking this class. I have a copy of Fermi's Thermodynamics (somewhere), but I'm not exactly sure what's in it. I just think it's silly that I'm...

Homework Statement Consider a system made of 4 quantum fermions that can access 10 distinct states respectively with energies: En=n/10 eV with n=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 1) Write the expression for the entropy when the particles can access all states with equal probability 2) Compute...