Section 5 Part 2 Probability Distributions for （第五节第2部分的概率分布）.pdf

Section 5 Part 2 Probability Distributions for Discrete Random Variables Review and Overview • So far we’ve covered the following probability and probability distribution topics – Probability rules – Probability tables to describe the distributions of Nominal variables – Probability density curves for continuous variables – particularly the Normal Distribution • Section 5 Part 2 covers two probability distributions for discrete random variables with particular focus on – Binomial Distribution – Poisson Distribution PubH 6414 Section 5 Part 2 2 Review: Probability Distributions • Any characteristic that can be measured or categorized is called a variable. • If the variable can assume a number of different values such that any particular outcome is determined by chance it is called a random variable. • Every random variable has a corresponding probability distribution . • The probability distribution applies the theory of probability to describe the behavior of the random variable. PubH 6414 Section 5 Part 2 3 Discrete Random Variable • A discrete random variable X has a finite number of possible integer values. The probability distribution of X lists the values and their probabilities in a table Value of X x1 x2 x3 … xk Probability p1 p2 p3 … pk 1. Every probability p is a number between 0 and 1. i 2. The sum of the probabilities must be 1. PubH 6414 Section 5 Part 2 4 Distribution of number of people in a family (U.S. 2005