What is a Poisson distribution?
The number of successes in a Poisson experiment is referred to as a Poisson random variable. A Poisson distribution is a probability distribution of a Poisson random variable. For example, suppose we know that a receptionist receives an average of 1 phone call per hour. We might ask: What is the likelihood that she will get 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 calls next hour. If we treat the number of phone calls as a Poisson random variable, the various probabilities can be calculated, as shown in the table below.
