Function Poisson(lambda)

Poisson

The function Poisson draws a random value from a Poisson distribution.

Poisson(
    AverageNumberOfSuccesses     ! (input) numerical expression
    )

Arguments

lambda

A scalar numerical expression \(> 0\).

Return Value

The function Poisson returns a random value drawn from a Poisson distribution with average number of occurrences AverageNumberOfSuccesses.

Graph

A graph with:

• a histogram for 1000 experiments of drawing from distribution Poisson(4), and

• the DistributionDensity for Poisson(4)

Example

The code:

option seed := 1234 ;
_p_draw := Poisson( 10 );
_p_pointDensity := DistributionDensity( Poisson( 10 ), 5 );

block where listing_number_precision := 6 ;
        display _p_draw, _p_pointDensity ;
endblock ;

will produce

_p_draw := 12 ;
_p_pointDensity := 0.037833 ;

in the listing file.

References

• The Poisson distribution is discussed in full detail in Discrete Distributions of the Language Reference.

• Wikipedia