Statistics Lectures - 12: Poisson Distribution

Related Pages
10: Discrete & Continuous Random Variable
11: Law Of Large Numbers & Binomial Distribution
13: Scatter Plots & Pearson’s r Correlation
14: Linear Regression & Spearman Correlation
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Statistics - Lecture 34: Poisson Distribution/Process

The Poisson probability distribution is used when computing the probability of a certain number of successes within a specified interval.
An experiment follows the Poisson process if it:

1. The probability of two successes in a small enough interval is 0%.
2. The probability of a success is the same for any two intervals which share the same length.
3. Successes are independent of successes in other intervals.

Example:
At a theme park, there is a roller coaster that sends an average of three cars through its circuit every minute between 6pm and 7pm. A random variable, X, represents the number of roller coaster cars to pass through the circuit between 6pm and 6:10pm.
Is this a Poisson random variable?
What is the probability that 35 cars will pass through the circuit between 6pm and 6:10pm?

Statistics - Lecture 35: Mean and Standard Deviation of Poisson Random Variables

Statistics Lecture Series - Table Of Contents

• Descriptive Statistics
• Probability
• Correlation
• Inferential Statistics

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