September 30, 2003
The Poisson Distribution
The Poisson distribution approximates a binomial distribution for large n and small p.
We looked at some other values for the parameter lambda, which is the mean.
Dean Smith coached at Carolina for 36 years and had 26 players (the 24 listed plus Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter) selected in the first round of the NBA draft. If the players averaged 3 years at Carolina, then the average number of first round players on a Dean Smith team was 26 x 3 / 36 = 2.2. The distribution of the number of first round players an opponent faced could be modeled as Poisson with a parameter of 2.2.
Posted by bparke at 02:44 PM
