ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a set of examples that may be used in everyday analysis and the basis for the statistical results printed on most commercial scintillation counters. All manufacturers of liquid scintillation counters use computer assistance to gather the results, and this allows the results to be expressed in terms of the %2σ. If the cpm of a count that contains only scintillation cocktail and nonradioactive sample is, say, 25 cpm and an active sample is giving 98,000 cpm, then the background as a percentage of the total cpm is only 0.025%. Counting statistics are then applied to calculate the probability of obtaining a given count within a defined confidence limit. If an estimate of the dpm values is required, then the statistics should be calculated on the basis of cpm, and then an estimate for the counting efficiency can be factored in.
