poisson distribution
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.75 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
19
Letters
5
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of a class of discrete probability distributions that express the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed time interval, where the events occur independently and at a constant average rate; describable as a limit case of either binomial or negative binomial distributions.
Example Sentences
- "For the modeling of many phenomena there is a need for enlarging the family of Poisson distributions. One possibility of doing this is the use of mixed Poisson distributions (outlined above)."
- "It is worth noting, therefore, that unlike the binomial distribution in which we are interested in observing both 'success' and 'failure', the application of the Poisson distribution is concerned only with occurrences rather than non-occurrences."
- "A mixture of Poisson processes will have a spike count described by a mixture of Poisson distributions. A model allowing a mixture of a few Poisson distributions adds substantial flexibility, while keeping the calculations reasonably simple."
- "As indicated, problems involving the number of occurrences of independent, randomly occurring events per unit of space or time can often be modeled with the Poisson distribution."
Etymology
After French mathematician Siméon Denis Poisson (1781-1840), who introduced the distribution in his 1837 work Recherches sur la probabilité des jugements en matière criminelle et en matière civile ("Research on the Probability of Judgements in Criminal and Civil Matters"), although prior work had been done by Abraham de Moivre.