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MATH 2274 Lecture 9 Discrete Distributions (continued)

CALCULATING BINOMIAL PROBABILITIES :

Consider the following:

E.g. 2. Suppose that 20% of all copies of a particular textbook fail a certain binding strength test.
Let X denote the number among 15 randomly selected copies that fail the test. Find:

i) The probability that at most 8 fail the test.


ii) The probability that exactly 8 fail.
iii) The probability that at least 8 fail.
iv) The probability that between 4 and 7, inclusive, fail.

Note: The above can be calculated manually using the Binomial distribution OR using the
binomial tables.

Using the binomial tables:

Binomial Tables calculate the df or cdf F(x) = P(Xx).


For X ~ Bin(n,p), the cdf is denoted by P(Xx) = =0 (; , ).
A table entry of 0 signifies that the probability is 0 to three significant figures.

Solution:

i) X ~ Bin(15, 0.2)

P(X8) = 8=0 (; 15,0.2) = 0.999 Look at the binomial table where n = 15. It is the
entry in the x = 8 row and the p = 0.2 column.
ii) P(X=8) = P(X8) - P(X7) = 8=0 (; 15,0.2) 7=0 (; 15,0.2) This is the
difference between the entries in the row for x= 8 and x = 7 in the p = 0.2 column i.e.
0.999 0.996 = 0.003.
iii) P(X8) = 1- P(X7) = 1 0.996
iv) P(4X7) = P(X = 4,5,6 or 7) = P(X7) P(X3) = 0.996 0.648 = 0.348

4) POISSON DISTRIBUTION

This distribution assigns probabilities to the number of occurrences of a certain event in a


specified unit of space or time. It satisfies the following properties:

i) The no. of successes in two disjoint intervals is independent.


ii) The probability of a success during a small time interval is proportional to the entire
length of the time interval.

E.g.s of r.v.s that usually obey the Poisson distribution:

No. of misprints on a page, no. of customers entering a post office on a given day, no. of
vacancies during a year at school, no. of wrong telephone nos. dialed in a day, no. of machines
which failed in a month, no. of car accidents on a given day etc.

Definition 1: A discrete r.v. X with a pf. f has a Poisson distribution with parameter (>0) if


f(x) = for x = 0, 1, 2, ...
!

where is the mean number of successes in the given time interval or region of space.

Question: Show that f is a valid pf.

Theorem 1: Suppose X~ Poisson(). Then:

i) E(X) = ii) Var(X) =

Proof: See Lecture notes pg 51.

POISSON APPROXIMATION TO THE BINOMIAL

Suppose that X ~ B(n,p) where n is very large (n> 100 say) and p is very small (p 0.01).
Then, the pf f of X can be approximated very closely by that of a Poisson distribution with
parameter = np, i.e. X Poisson (np).

E.g. See Lecture notes pg 55.

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