STAT-3090 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Poisson Distribution, Binomial Distribution, Landfall

• School: Clemson University
• Department: Statistics
• Course: STAT-3090
• Professor: kayla javiar

Document Summary

6. 6 objectives: recognize the properties of a poisson experiment, calculate probabilities using the poisson formula, calculate and interpret the expected value, variance, and standard deviation of a poisson random variable, recognize and compute probabilities for a uniform function. To use the binomial distribution, we must be able to count the number of successes and the number of failures. Although many situations allow you to count the number of successes, you often cannot count the number of failures. In cases like this, it is difficult (if not impossible) to determine the total number of outcomes, but, you may be able to use the poisson distribution. The poisson distribution when applied to a situation like this allows us to calculate probabilities such as the probability that a hospital will receive 5 emergency calls in a particular hour. The poisson distribution describes a process that extends over time, space or any well-defined unit of concern.