ECO220Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: List Of Statistical Packages, Poisson Distribution, Standard Normal Deviate
Document Summary
Generally the object of an investigators interest is not necessarily the action in the sample space but rather some function of it. Technically a real valued function or mapping whose domain is the sample space is called a random variable, it is these that are usually the object of an investigators attention. If the mapping is onto a finite (or countably infinite) set of points on the real line, the random variable is said to be discrete. Otherwise, if the mapping is onto an uncountably infinite set of points, the random variable is continuous. This distinction is a nuisance because the nature of thing which describes the probabilistic behaviour of the random variable, called a probability. Density function (denoted here as f(x) and referred to as a p. d. f. ), will differ according to whether the variable is discrete or continuous. Discrete random variable obeys 2 rules: ( ixf ixf ix: 0 all possible.
