The statistical analysis of polymer fractionation data. Part I

The analysis of simple successive polymer fractionation data by conventional and statistical methods is discussed. The fractionation model originating in the Flory‐Huggins theory of polymer solutions is used to test the alternative methods. The direct statistical methods are shown to be superior to alternative procedures. Such methods approximate the individual fraction distributions by simple statistical distributions (binomial or generalized exponential), the parameters of which are calculated directly from a knowledge of two average molecular weights (M̄n and M̄w).