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4.1 Normal Distribution: Properties

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4.1 Normal Distribution: Properties

Uploaded by

Jun Ahn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4.

1 Normal Distribution

Properties
l Very useful for a variety of problems
l Symmetric, unimodal, bell-shaped curve
l Parameters: mean, standard deviation

Z-Score

 

Putting data onto a “standardised” scale

Important Examples
Comparing the approximate percentile of data, each in different groups
1.
2. Compare the Z-scores

How to solve a normal probability


1. Draw a picture of the normal distribution.
2. Calculate the Z-score.
3. Find the probability using the probability table.

68-95-99.7 Rule
4.2. Geometric Distribution

Bernoulli Distribution
Properties
l Random process with only two outcomes: a success or failure
l Probability of a success ∈    

Mean and SD of a Bernoulli distribution


 and   
    
when success takes the value  and failure takes the value 

Geometric Distribution
Describes how many trials it takes to observe a success
-axis: number of trials until a success; -axis: probability

Mean and SD of Distribution


When the probability of succuess is ,
Probability of finding the first success in the  th trial:      
Mean:     

SD:   



4.3 Binomial Distribution

Properties
l Used to describe the number of successes in a fixed number of trials
l A “final probability” is identified:  of scenarios   single scenario
l  single scenario        (for  successes and  trials)

    
 

Mean and SD
   and   
    

Conditions
l Independence
l Fixed number of trials
l Outcome is either success or failure
l  is the same for each trial

Computing Binomial Probabilities


1. Check if the model is appropriate.
2. Identify     and .
3. Use the formula to do the calculations.

Normal Approximation
If  and      are both big enough, at least , then we can approximate the binomial
distribution as a normal distribution.

Steps
1. Check if  and      are greater than or equal to .
2. Compute  and .
3. Use the normal model    to estimate the probability of observing a certain range of
successes.

Bad approximation
Even if the conditions are met, the approximation performs poorly when estimating the
probability of a small range of counts
4.4 Negative Binomial Distribution

What is it?
The negative binomial distribution is a more general version of the geometric distribution: It
th th
describes the probability of observing the  success on the  trial.

Conditions
l Independence
l Outcome is either success or failure
l  is the same for each trial
l The last trial being a success

The Probability
th
The negative binomial distribution describes the probability of observing the  success on
th
the  trial, where all trials are independent:

n  
 the  th success on the  th trial k  p k   p n  k

4.5 Poisson Distribution

What does it do?


The Poisson distribution helps to estimate the number of events in a large population over a
unit of time.

Parameter
The rate — or the average number of occurrences in a mostly-fixed population per unit of
time — is the parameter in the Poisson distribution. It is the number of events we expect to
observe, and it is denoted by  or 

Formulas
   
 observe  events  


  

These formulas can be easily proven by expanding the first equation to the form of a Taylor
series.

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