The Poisson Probability Distribution

The Poisson Distribution was developed by the French mathematician Simeon

Denis Poisson in 1837.
The Poisson random variable satisfies the following conditions:
1. The number of successes in two disjoint time intervals is independent.
2. The probability of a success during a small time interval is proportional
to the entire length of the time interval.
Apart from disjoint time intervals, the Poisson random variable also applies
to disjoint regions of space.
Applications
the number of deaths by horse kicking in the Prussian army (first application)
birth defects and genetic mutations
rare diseases (like Leukemia, but not AIDS because it is infectious and so not
independent) - especially in legal cases
car accidents
traffic flow and ideal gap distance
number of typing errors on a page
hairs found in McDonald's hamburgers
spread of an endangered animal in Africa
failure of a machine in one month
The probability distribution of a Poisson random variable X representing the number of
successes occurring in a given time interval or a specified region of space is given by the
formula:

Mean and Variance of Poisson Distribution

If is the average number of successes occurring in a given time interval or
region in the Poisson distribution, then the mean and the variance of the
Poisson distribution are both equal to .





Example 2

A company makes electric motors. The probability an electric motor is
defective is 0.01. What is the probability that a sample of 300 electric motors
will contain exactly 5 defective motors?
Solution



Example: 1
During a laboratory experiment, the average number of
radioactive particles passing through a counter in 1 millisecond
is 4. What is the probability that 6 particles enter the counter in
a given millisecond?
Solution
Using the Poisson distribution with x = 6 and t = 4







Example: 2

Solution

Sum all observation =0.9458










Example
Vehicles pass through a junction on a busy road at an average rate of 300 per
hour.
a. Find the probability that none passes in a given minute.
b. What is the expected number passing in two minutes?
c. Find the probability that this expected number actually pass through in a
given two-minute period.

Solution








Example 1
A life insurance salesman sells on the average 3 life insurance policies per
week. Use Poisson's law to calculate the probability that in a given week he
will sell
a. Some policies
b. 2 or more policies but less than 5 policies.
c. Assuming that there are 5 working days per week, what is the
probability that in a given day he will sell one policy?


Solution



The Poisson Probability Distribution



The probability distribution of the Poisson random variable X,
representing the number of outcomes occurring in a given time interval
or specified region denoted by t, is


Application
Like the binomial distribution, the Poisson distribution is
used for quality control, quality assurance, and acceptance
sampling. In addition, certain important continuous
distributions used in reliability theory and queuing theory
depend on the Poisson process.
Although the Poisson usually finds applications in space and
time problems

Theorem 5.4
Both the mean and the variance of the Poisson distribution

Some special case condition

In the case of the binomial, if n is quite large and p is small, the
conditions begin to simulate the continuous space or time implications
of the Poisson process.

if n is large and p is close to 0, the Poisson distribution can
be used, with = np, to approximate binomial probabilities.
If p is close to 1,
we can still use the Poisson distribution to approximate binomial
probabilities by interchanging what we have defined to be a
success and a failure,
thereby changing p to a value close to 0.




Theorem 5.5

Example: 3
In a certain industrial facility, accidents occur infrequently. It is known
that the probability of an accident on any given day is 0.005 and
accidents are independent of each other

Solution

Let X be a binomial random variable with n = 400 and p = 0.005.
Thus, np = 2.



Example:4
In a manufacturing process where glass products are made, defects or
bubble soccur, occasionally rendering the piece undesirable for
marketing. It is known that, on average, 1 in every 1000 of these items
produced has one or more bubbles.
What is the probability that a random sample of 8000 will yield fewer
than 7 items possessing bubbles?
Solution