One example is the number of births in a city in a given week, and another is the number of cosmic rays detected in a given area in a day. It justifies the rule of thumb that, if you count N events, the uncertainty in the number is given by the square root of N. Also called the "law of small numbers," it says the probabilit
One example is the number of births in a city in a given week, and another is the number of cosmic rays detected in a given area in a day. It justifies the rule of thumb that, if you count N events, the uncertainty in the number is given by the square root of N. Also called the "law of small numbers," it says the probability that an event occurs N times is given by e to the minus x, times x to the N, divided by N factorial, where x is the expected number of events. Radioactive decay counting is one place where it is commonly found. For 10 points, what is this statistical distribution discovered by a 19th- century French mathematician?
One example is the number of births in a city in a given week, and another is the number of cosmic rays detected in a given area in a day.
{Poisson} distribution