Abstract
The Poisson distribution governs unlikely random events. An example of an unlikely random event is the radioactive disintegration of a uranium 238 92U nucleus. The probability of such a disintegration is so small that an observer watching a single 238 92U nucleus for the entire time the earth has existed would have only a 50–50 chance of seeing it disintegrate. The number of atoms in a milligram of 238 92U is so huge, however, that numerous atoms decay in only a second of observation time. Just how numerous is, of course, a matter of chance. The Poisson distribution gives the probabilities associated with 1, 2, 3,… disintegrations.
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Bibliography
W. C. Schefler, Statistics for the Biological Sciences, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1969.
H. D. Young, Statistical Treatment of Experimental Data, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962.
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© 1983 Humana Press Inc.
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Rogers, D.W. (1983). Using the Poisson Distribution. In: BASIC Microcomputing and Biostatistics. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5300-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5300-6_6
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