Basic Probability Distributions

Abstract

In this chapter we will discuss some of the most commonly used probability distributions. We will discuss basic properties of these distributions; in particular, we will provide explicit formulas for the mean and variance. We focus the binomial distribution, the hyper geometric distribution, the Poisson distribution, and the normal distribution. The literature making use of these distributions is really huge. The normal distribution alone is applied in thousands of scientific papers yearly. A full treatment is hence impossible, so we limit our ambitions to a basic survival kit.