POISSON DISTRIBUTION

Introduction
Consider a situation satisfying the following conditions:

 random events occur in a continuum (e.g. time, space, or length),

 the events occur independently of each other,

 the events occur at a constant expected (or mean) rate  per unit time (or space, etc).

 The actual number of times, X , that the event occurs during the given interval follows a Poisson
distribution

X Po(λ)

Queue lengths, traffic accidents, radioactive decay,… are all examples of variables that follow a
Poisson distribution

Example1
Typos in a document

Example2
Goals in a football match

Probability Distribution
If is the number of times that an event is expected to occur in a given interval,
then the number of times it actually occurs, X, has probability

−λ x
( ) e λ
p x= x=0,1,2 , … , ∞
x!
(For proof see tutorial exercises.)

Note that theoretically x can go up to infinity. This differs from the Binomial distribution where x was
limited to the number of trials, n.

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Example 3
The mean number of calls to a switchboard is 8 per hour. Assuming a Poisson model, calculate the
probability of exactly 5 calls during the next hour

Probabilities can be calculated recursively as follows

Calculation Formula

P(x events) =  P(x-1 events) x = 1, 2, 3, ...

x

Example 4
There are four road accidents per week on average in a certain town. Assuming a Poisson model,
what is the most likely number of accidents to occur in the town next week?

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Interval properties

If the interval is increased / decreased by a factor, the mean is increased / decreased by the same
factor.

Example 5

The expected number of arrivals to a rollercoaster queue is 6 every 5 minutes. Assuming a Poisson
model, calculate the probability of

a) exactly 7 arrivals in the next 10 minutes

b) more than 2 arrivals in the next 3 minutes.

Example 6
The daily numbers of road accidents occurring at a busy junction on 90 days are given in the table
below. Calculate the frequencies predicted by the Poisson model for this situation.

Accidents 0 1 2 3 4 5+
Days (frequency) 42 27 19 1 1 0

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Is the Poisson model a good fit?

What does it assume about road accidents?

Parameter properties

Note that the Variance = Mean = 

Poisson Approximation to the Binomial

• When n is large, the probabilities for a Binomial distribution are sometimes difficult to
calculate as the numbers get too big
• In these instances, the probabilities can be approximated using the Poisson distribution (with
mean np)

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