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Poisson Distribution

This lesson is part of NumPy · All levels

Summary

Poisson's distribution describes the number of events occurring over a given time span or area when occurring rarely and randomly. An example is the number of subscribers per hour or the number of incoming messages per minute.

Key points

Poisson(lam, size) with lam = average occurrence per interval.
Suitable for rare, random, and independent occurrences.
In Poisson, mean and variance are equal to lam.
The shape is tilted to the right when the lam is small, more symmetrical when the lam is large.

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