THE INTERPRETATION OF B. COLI TEST RESULTS ON A NUMERICAL AND COMPARATIVE BASIS AS APPLIED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF WATER AND SEWAGE
Abstract
CONTENT ALERTS Receive: RSS Feeds, eTOCs, free email alerts (when new articles cite this article), more» Information about commercial reprint orders: http://jb.asm.org/site/misc/reprints.xhtml To subscribe to to another ASM Journal go to: http://journals.asm.org/site/subscriptions/ THE INTERPRETATION OF B. COLI TEST RESULTS ON A NUMERICAL AND COMPARATIVE BASIS AS APPLIED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF WATER AND SEWAGE MILTON F. STEIN Downloaded from http://jb.asm.org/ on December 10, 2011 by deepdyve Received for publication, January 30, 1919 One of the principal shortcomings of the B. coli test lies in the interpretation of the results obtained. A statement of the number of colon bacilli present in the liquor tested is the only presentation of results which would be intelligible to the layman, and an analysis of professional discussions as to the interpretation of B. coli tests for specific purposes will often disclose that one of the things befogging the issue is the failure to agree on what a certain percentage of positive tests really means. By use of the theory of probabilities, it is possible to interpret the results as usually obtained in terms of definite numerical values. The writer devised a method for doing this several years ago, of which a synopsis was