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Poisson Distribution

A Poisson distribution:

  • can be used to model the number of times an event occurs in an interval of time or space

  • is a discrete probability distribution 

  • expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space

  • events occur at a constant mean rate

  • events occur independently of the time since the last event

  • can be applied to measures such as distance, area, and volume