A Generalization of Neyman's Contagious Distributions

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Contagious distributions have been found to apply to situations where popu-lations initially exist in randomly scattered clumps and where subsequent outward movements of individuals within clumps are not independent. They have been applied widely to distributions of insects or microorganisms in their natural environments. Neyman originally proposed 3 types of contagious distributions which did not fit all exptl. data. These authors generalized Neyman''s distributions and in some cases found better fits to data previously poorly fitted by Neyman''s distributions. The generalized distribution is derived and applied to many different sets of exptl. data. Comparisons with Neyman''s distributions are made on the basis of chi-square goodness of fit tests. A particular case is worked out in detail to illus. the nature of the computations.