Figure 3

Statistical investigation and interpretation of tracked stem cell division times.

(a) Comparison between the cumulative distribution function (CDF) and the 95% confidence intervals for the Gaussian distribution fitted via maximum likelihood estimation method and the empirical CDF of the mouse stem cell division times. (b) Comparison between the exceedance probability (i.e., probability of observing a stem cell division time greater than a specific threshold) and the 95% confidence interval for the fitted Gaussian distribution and the empirical inverse CDF of the mouse stem cell division times. (c) Comparison between the exceedance probability and its 95% confidence intervals for the fitted Log-normal distribution and the empirical inverse CDF of the mouse stem cell division times. (d) Comparison between the exceedance probability and its 95% confidence intervals for the fitted Gamma distribution and the empirical inverse CDF of the mouse stem cell division times. (e) Maximum likelihood fitting and the error bars for the uni-modal Gaussian probability density function (PDF). The empirical PDF is shown by the blue dots. (f) Maximum likelihood fitting and the error bars for the α-stable PDF. Rejection of uni-modal mathematical modeling approaches for stem cell growth is motivated not only by the inconsistencies observed via graphical inspection of the empirical PDF against postulated PDF, but also by the very small p-value probabilities of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test (see the Supplementary Material).