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But to find the maximum I think you have to take the derivative of an n!... Does anyone know how to do this? Or am I going about the problem completely wrong?
 
But to find the maximum I think you have to take the derivative of an n!... Does anyone know how to do this? Or am I going about the problem completely wrong?
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//Comment - I am also stuck on taking the derivative. anyone know how to do this?

Revision as of 16:00, 10 November 2008

I think you start by working the maximum likelihood estimation formula of a binomial RV. The number of photons captured is (1,000,000) and the probability of the camera catching a photon is p, n (the number of photons total) is what we are looking for.

$ \hat n_{ML} = \text{max}_n ( \binom{n}{k} p^{k} (1-p)^{n-k} ) $

$ \hat n_{ML} = \text{max}_n ( \binom{n}{1000000} p^{1000000} (1-p)^{n-1000000} ) $

But to find the maximum I think you have to take the derivative of an n!... Does anyone know how to do this? Or am I going about the problem completely wrong?

//Comment - I am also stuck on taking the derivative. anyone know how to do this?

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