Statistics of Particle Size Data

SUMMARY This paper identifies various statistical problems in the measurement and analysis of particle sizes. The log-skew-Laplace distribution is proposed as a simple but effective model for particle sizes which can be readily extended to handle more complex situations such as mixtures and the marrying of measurements of different aspects of size. The model is compared with other contenders, the lognormal and log-hyperbolic distributions, in the analysis of sand grain data from the Hebrides.