Modeling Raindrop Size

Abstract

Being able to characterize the size of raindrops is useful in a number of fields including meteorology, hydrology, agriculture and telecommunications. Associated with this article are data sets containing surface (i.e. ground-level) measurements of raindrop size from two different instruments and two different geographical locations. Students may begin to develop some sense of the character of raindrop size distributions through some basic exploratory data analysis of these data sets. Teachers of mathematical statistics students will find an example useful for discussing the beta, gamma, lognormal and Weibull probability density models, as well as fitting these by maximum likelihood and assessing the quality of fit. R software is provided by the authors to assist students in these investigations.

• Distribution
• Exploratory Data Analysis
• Parameter Estimation
• Maximum Likelihood
• Disdrometer
• Beta Density
• Exponential Density
• Gamma Density
• Lognormal Density
• Weibull Density