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

Latest revision as of 17:04, 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 Anand Gautam - I am also stuck on taking the derivative. anyone know how to do this?

Alumni Liaison

Ph.D. 2007, working on developing cool imaging technologies for digital cameras, camera phones, and video surveillance cameras.

Buyue Zhang