4.31 (Continuation of Exercise 2.26)

An experiment took place in St. Andrews University, in which groups of golf tees were placed randomly in a field, and records were kept of which groups were observed on each of T sampling occasions; see Borchers et al.

(2002, p.13). If fi denotes the number of groups that were found i times, then the resulting data are shown below.

f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 46 28 21 13 23 14 6 11 The purpose of the study was to simulate a standard ecological investigation, aimed at estimating animal abundance. For a study of this kind, the likelihood in general consists of components such as: