Mathematics | Probability Distributions

Set 4 (Binomial Distribution)

The previous articles talked about some of the Continuous Probability
Distributions. This article covers one of the distributions which are not
continuous but discrete, namely the Binomial Distribution.

Introduction –
To understand the Binomial distribution, we must first understand what
a Bernoulli Trial is. A Bernoulli trial is a random experiment with only two
possible outcomes. These two outcomes are usually referred to as
Success and Failure, but they may be given any label necessary. Each
Bernoulli trial or a Random experiment is independent of the other.
For example, consider the scenario where we need to find the probability of
the event of a even number showing up on die roll.
If E = Even number shows up, then

Here (or simply ‘p’) may be referred to as the probability of Success

and (or simply ‘q’) may be referred as the probability of Failure.
Notice that,
, since there are only two possible outcomes.
Now consider that the experiment is repeated and we try to find the
probability of success. We get,

This is the same probability as the first experiment. This is because the two
experiments are independent i.e. the outcome of one experiment does not
affect the other.
Now that we know what a Bernoulli trial is, we can move on to understand
the Binomial Distribution.

A random experiment consists of n Bernoulli trials such that

1. The trials are independent.
2. Each trial results in only two possible outcomes, labeled as
“success” and “failure.”
3. The probability of a success in each trial, denoted as p,
remains constant.
The random variable X that equals the number of trials that result
in a success
is a binomial random variable
with parameters 0 < p < 1 and n = 1, 2, ….
The probability mass function is given by-

Probability Mass Function –

The above stated probability mass function is a legitimate probability
function.

Notice that in the above formula, if we put n=1, we get the same result as a
Bernoulli trial. Here x can take value 0 or 1(since number of successes can
be 0 or 1 in one experiment).

Expected Value –
To find the Expected Value of the Binomial Distribution, let’s first find out the
Expected value of a Bernoulli trial. Let p and q be the probabilities of
Success(1) and Failure(0).

Since the Binomial Distribution has n Bernoulli trials, the expected Value is
multiplied by n. This is due to the fact that each experiment is independent
and the Expected value of the sum of Random variables is equal to the sum
of their individual Expected Values. This property is also called the Linearity
of Expectation.

Variance and Standard deviation –

The variance of the Binomial distribution can be found in a similar way. For n
independent Random Variables,

Here, Var[BT] is the Variance of 1 Bernoulli trial.

Using this result to find out the variance of the Binomial Distribution.

The Standard Deviation of the distribution-

 Example – An airline sells 65 tickets for a plane with capacity of 60

passengers. This is done because it is possible for some people to not
show up. The probability of a person not showing up for the flight is 0.1.
All passengers behave independently. Find the probability of the event
that the airline does not have to arrange separate tickets for excess
people.

 Solution – If more than 60 people show up, then the airline has to
reschedule tickets for the excess number of people. Let X be the random
variable denoting the number of passengers that show up. We have to
find the probability of the event where X <=60.
Let p be the probability that a passenger shows up. p = 1 – 0.1 = 0.9.
q = 0.1