wiki:maths:poisson

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Poissonian Processes

A Poissonian Process is one governed by Poisson Statistics.

$$\mathcal{Pois}(\mathbf{X}=x; \lambda) = \frac{\lambda^{x}e^{-\lambda}}{x!}$$

With the $n$-th sampling from this distribution being noted: $x_n \thicksim \mathcal{Pois}(\lambda)$

Here, $\lambda$ is the average number of occurrences in some period, i.e., the average rate. And $x$ is the number of times an occurrence occurred in a period of equal length.

$x_n \thicksim \mathcal{Pois}(\lambda)$ might then be:

  1. Given an average number of customers per day($\lambda$), what is the probability that $x_n$ visit tomorrow?
  2. Given an average number of cars passing under an overpass per hour ($\lambda$), what is the probability that $x_n$ cars pass under an overpass from 10:43-10:44?
  3. Given an average number of raindrops collected in a small container per minute ($\lambda$), what is the probability that $x_n$ are collected in the next minute?
  4. Number of photons incident on a detector per second