SOCR EduMaterials Activities Poisson Distribution
From Socr
This is an activity to explore the Poisson Probability Distribution.
- Description: You can access the applets for the above distributions at http://www.socr.ucla.edu/htmls/SOCR_Distributions.html .
- Exercise 1: Use SOCR to graph and print the distribution of a Poisson random variable with λ = 2. What is the shape of this distribution?
- Exercise 2: Use SOCR to graph and print the distribution of a Poisson random variable with λ = 15. What is the shape of this distribution? What happens when you keep increasing λ?
- Exercise 3: Let
. Find
, and
.
- Exercise 4: Poisson approximation to binomial: Graph and print
. Approximate this probability distribution using Poisson. Choose three values of X and compute the probability for each one using Poisson and then using binomial. How good is the approximation?
Below you can see the distribution of a Poisson random variable with λ = 5. In this graph you can also see the probability that between 2 and 5 events will occur.

- SOCR Home page: http://www.socr.ucla.edu
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