ON MEAN FREE-PATH STATISTICS OF RELATIVISTIC HEAVY-IONS IN NUCLEAR-EMULSION

We survey at the general level, and in a rather wide and historical co ntext, some less known mathematical details of various mean free path statistics in nuclear emulsion as applied to relativistic projectile f ragmentations. A number of comments are provided on Feller's paradox, ordered, censored, and truncated statistics, Erlang and Poisson observ ers of nuclear emulsion. All these are related to the statistical appr oaches used about a decade ago at Berkeley Bevalac for anomalons, some of which should be considered as standard methods for mean free paths ' estimators of relativistic heavy ions in emulsion.