Ask Dr. Random

[M Lang / S Railsback]

Hey Sven (or anybody else that knows more about probability than I do):

I have a problem that I think would best be modeled using a Poisson
distribution, which is not in the Random library.

The mean number of times per day a single fish is caught by fisherpeople
is 0.5 (for example; there are a LOT of people fishing for hatchery
trout at this site). I need to randomly draw the number of times each
individual fish was caught in a day, which will be an integer of zero or
greater. 

I believe this problem is best represented with the Poisson
distribution, which models the number of times an event occurs within a
specified time period, given the mean occurrence rate. (The exponential
distribution would tell me the probability of a fish being caught at
least once during a day, which is not what I want.)

This seems like a fairly common kind of problem. Has somebody
implemented it already?

Steve
-- 
address@hidden
Lang, Railsback & Assoc.
250 California Ave., Arcata CA 95521
707-822-0453; Fax 822-1868


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