Figure 6.

Results of plaque assay simulation for parameters N₀ = 10⁶, M = 10⁵, Q = 1, D = 10, d_max = 10, and T = 10. (a) The scatter plot of simulated data P_d,t (circles) and the expected value of plaque counts as given by Eq. 10 show close agreement. (b) The likelihood function $\mathcal{L}\left(P_{d,t}|N_0\right)$ with respect to N₀ using the same simulated data. The MLE obtained by iteratively solving Eq. 15 is ${\hat{N}}_0=9.97\times {10}^5$ and is relatively closer to the true value of N₀ than the estimate calculated from the standard method in Eq. 13, ${\hat{N}}_0=1.02\times {10}^6$. To see this figure in color, go online.