a distribution that represents the number of events occurring randomly in a fixed time at an average rate λ; symbol P0(λ). For large n and small p with np = λ it approximates to the binomial distribution Bi(n,p)
Word origin
C19: named after S. D. Poisson
Poisson distribution in American English
(pwɑˈsoʊn; pwɑˈsɔ̃̃)
Statistics
a frequency distribution that may be regarded as an approximation of the binomial distribution when the number of events becomes large and the probability of success becomes small