Poisson Distribution


This applet illustrates the Poisson distribution. There is one slider bar which allow changing the mean parameter of the distribution. Note how changing this parameter alters the shape and the center of the distribution. Also note that this distribution is only valid for nonnegative integer numbers.

Since the distribution is defined in terms of integers, the cumlative distribution function has steps instead of a continuous curve. The density has probability that masses at integer values with no probability for the real numbers between the integers. It is for this reason that we call discrete probability density functions probability mass functions.

Several statistics are shown for the distribution below the illustration of the density and distribution plots.

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