Poisson distribution 1

Poisson distribution
History
In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution (French pronunciation [pwas ]; in English usually /pwsn/), named after French mathematician Simon Denis Poisson, is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time and/or space if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since the last event. A practical application of this distribution was made by Ladislaus Bortkiewicz in 1898 when he was given the task of investigating the number of soldiers in the Prussian army killed accidentally by horse kicks; this experiment introduced the Poisson distribution to the field of reliability engineering.

The definitions
There is several opinion regarding the definition of the poisson distribution. But the main idea of it is basically a discrete probability distribution for the count of events that occur randomly in a given time. Another definition states that a discrete frequency distribution which gives the probability of a number of independent events occurring in a fixed time. Poisson distribution is different compared to eh normal distribution, it is not symmetrical but it is skewed to the left of the median. The advantage of using the Poisson distribution is that it is good for inspection sampling it is employed where the probability of an event is small and the number of opportunities for the event is large. In other words, Poission distribution is the extension of the binomial distribution and can be used as its approximation.

Poisson distribution 2

The Poisson process

In order for the terms to be used, it must follow a certain process which is: 1. The numbers of changes in non-overlapping intervals are all independent. 2. The probability of exactly one change in a sufficiently small interval 3. The probability of h is essentially 0 if two or more changes in small interval. If the limit of the number of trials increase/large, the resulting distribution is called Poisson distribution.

The derivation
Assuming X = the number of events = mean of the event per interval

Where e is the constant, Euler's number (e = 2.71828...)

It is also written as:

Where = the parameter of the distribution. We can conclude that X follow a Poisson distribution with the parameter

Poisson distribution 3

Simple example: A Births rate in a hospital occur randomly at an average rate of 1.8 births per hour. What is the probability of observing 4 births in a given hour at the hospital? Assuming X = No. of births in a given hour i) Events occur randomly ii) Mean rate = 1.8 Using the poisson formula, we cam simply calculate the distribution. P(X = 4) =( e^-1.8)(1.8^4)/(4!) Ans: 0.0723 What about the probability of observing more than or equal to 2 births in a given hour at the hospital? We want P(X 2) = P(X = 2) + P(X = 3) + ...

This number will be infinite. So the normal type of distribution is used whereby the possible outcome is subtracted by 1. Hence,

P(X 2) = P(X = 2) + P(X = 3) + ... = 1 - P(X < 2) = 1 P(X = 0) + P(X = 1) -> apply the Poisson equation = 1 (0.16529 + 0.29753)