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