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Statistical Distributions

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Poisson Distribution

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A Poisson distribution equation is used to figure out how many events could happen during a continuous interval of time. One example would be the number of phone calls that could happen during a certain time, or the number of people that could end up in a queue.

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This is actually a fairly simple equation to remember. The symbol is known a lambda. This is what represents the average amount of events that happen during a certain interval of time.

An example for this distribution equation is to figure out the loss in manufacturing sheets of metal with a machine that has X flaws that happen per yard. Let’s say that the error rate is two errors per yard of metal. Now figure out what the odds are that two errors would occur in a single yard.

Binomial Distribution

This is one of the most common and the first taught distribution in a basic statistics class. Let’s say our experiment is flipping a coin. Specifically, the coin is flipped only three times. What are the odds that the coin will land on heads?

Using combinatorics, we know that there are 2^3 or eight different results combinations. By graphing the odds of getting 3 heads, 2 heads, 1 heads, and 0 heads. This is your binomial distribution. On a graph, this will look just like a normal distribution. This is because binomial and normal distributions are very similar. The difference is that one is discrete and the other is continuous.