Figure 4

Theoretical confidence interval limits of the estimated concentration relative to the true concentration. The theoretical limits of a 95% confidence interval of the concentration estimate $\widehat{\lambda }$ divided by the true concentration λ as a function of this concentration (in copies per partition) for 20 000 analysed partitions. The limits are shown relative to the true concentration such that the precision of different dilutions of the same sample can be assessed on the same scale. Although the application can be used for concentration ranges of up to 5 orders of magnitude, very precise estimates are theoretically only possible for about 2 orders of magnitude.