Flow Rate Method Equation

(Poisson’s Counting Process )

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

• One of the most important types of counting processes is the Poisson

process (or Poisson counting process), it is usually used in scenarios
where we are counting the occurrences of a certain events that
appear to happen at a certain rate, but completely at random
(without a certain structure).

• For example, suppose that from historical data, we know that

earthquakes occur in a certain area with a rate of 2 per month. Other
than this information, the timings of earthquakes seem to be
completely random

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

Further examples
- The number of car accidents at a site or in an area.
- The location of users in a wireless network.
- The requests for individual documents on a web server.
-The outbreak of wars.
Poisson Random Variable :
A discrete random variable is said to be a Poisson random variable with
parameter λ, shown as

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

If then
Definition (Poisson Process)
The counting process is said to be a Poisson process having rate
(intensity)

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

• 1.
• 2. has independent increments.
• 3. The number of arrivals in any interval of length
has with mean .

We conclude that in a Poisson process, the distribution of the number

of arrivals in any interval depends only on the length of the interval and
not on the exact location of the interval on the real line.

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )
• Result.
• Let be the probability that exactly n events occur in an interval of length , namely,

Example: The number of customers arriving at a grocery store can be modelled by a

Poisson process with intensity λ=10 customers per hour.
1. Find the probability that there are 2 customers between 10:00 and 10:20.
2. Find the probability that there are 3 customers between 10:00 and 10:20 and 7
customers between 10:20 and 11.

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

• Solution
1. Here λ=10 and the interval between 10:00 and 10:20 has length
hours. Thus, if X is the number of arrivals in that interval, we can write
. Therefore

2. Here we have non-overlapping interval =(10:20 , 11:00]. Thus, we

can write
(3 arrivals in and 7 arrivals in = P(3 arrivals in )

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 Flow Rate Method Equation
(Poisson’s Counting Process )

• since the lengths of the two intervals and respectively, Thus, we have