What is Poisson Distribution?
Poisson distributions is amongst one of the most practical distributions in answering many of the questions of the modern world. Being used more than a century now, this probability distribution has been useful in solving various problems from medical, banking, agriculture, defence, mining, space research, service and manufacturing industries.
Poisson distribution is named in honour of French mathematician and physicist Simeon Denis Poisson. It is a discrete distribution because it shows probabilities of countable distinct values. In simpler terms, this distribution does not take all values in a continuous range. The distribution takes the values 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. with no decimals and fractions.
The formula of Poisson distribution is as below:
Where,
x = 0, 1, 2, 3….
λ is a real number and the expected value of x
e ≈ 2.718
Understanding Poisson distribution
A Poisson distribution is useful in estimating the probability that something will happen "X" number of times within a given time period. For example, if the average number of students who bunk the tuition class on a public holiday is 5, a Poisson distribution can answer questions such as, "What is the probability that more than 10 students will bunk the classes on a given public holiday?" The application of the Poisson distribution thereby enables tuition teachers to introduce optimal lecture schedules that would not work with, say, a normal distribution.
Before applying the Poisson distribution, there are few conditions to be satisfied as below:
1. x is the number of event that occurs in an interval and x can take values 0, 1, 2, ....
2. The occurrence of one event does not affect the probability that a second event will occur. That is, events occur independently.
3. The probability an event occurs is the same throughout the entire time interval.
Understanding Poisson distribution and its application from work area (Insurance)
(Numbers used are dummy for educational purpose)
The number of death claims received per day at an insurance company follows a Poisson distribution. The company receives an average of 3 death claims per day. The claims department needs an expert claims assessor to assess each case and settle the claims within promised timelines. The current staff size is capable to manage daily 5 cases. The department manager is allowed to recruit more staff if the probability of receiving more than maximum manageable cases exceeds by 20%. As a department manager, you would want to evaluate if you are eligible for fresh recruitment in department or not. You may use Poisson probability distribution to answer this question.
In this case, λ =3, hence the Poisson distribution for our case becomes as below:
----- (equation 1)
The question states you to calculate the probability of receiving more than maximum manageable cases i.e. more than or equal to 6 cases (X≥6).
In this case, the probability using Poisson distribution will be calculated as below:
Inserting x = 0,1,2,3,4,5 in equation 1 above, we get answer as below.
Since the probability of receiving more than manageable cases is less than 20%, the department manager is not eligible for a new recruitment in the department.
Visually, one can represent the above Poisson distribution problem as below:
Bibliography:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/poisson-distribution.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution
https://towardsdatascience.com/poisson-distribution-from-horse-kick-history-data-to-modern-analytic-5eb49e60fb5f
https://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/applets/pois.html