numpy.random.mtrand.RandomState.poisson

RandomState.poisson(lam=1.0, size=None)

Draw samples from a Poisson distribution.

The Poisson distribution is the limit of the Binomial distribution for large N.

Parameters :

lam : float

Expectation of interval, should be >= 0.

size : int or tuple of ints, optional

Output shape. If the given shape is, e.g., (m, n, k), then m * n * k samples are drawn.

Notes

The Poisson distribution

System Message: WARNING/2 (f(k; \lambda)=\frac{\lambda^k e^{-\lambda}}{k!} )

latex exited with error: [stderr] [stdout] This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/TeX Live for SUSE Linux) restricted \write18 enabled. entering extended mode (./math.tex LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, ge rman-x-2011-07-01, ngerman-x-2011-07-01, afrikaans, ancientgreek, ibycus, arabi c, armenian, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danis h, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, esperanto, estonian, ethiopic, farsi, finnis h, french, friulan, galician, german, ngerman, swissgerman, monogreek, greek, h ungarian, icelandic, assamese, bengali, gujarati, hindi, kannada, malayalam, ma rathi, oriya, panjabi, tamil, telugu, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, kurmanji, lao, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolianlmc, bokmal, nyn orsk, polish, portuguese, romanian, romansh, russian, sanskrit, serbian, serbia nc, slovak, slovenian, spanish, swedish, turkish, turkmen, ukrainian, uppersorb ian, welsh, loaded. (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8x.def’ not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop. <read *> l.131 \endinput ^^M No pages of output. Transcript written on math.log.

For events with an expected separation

System Message: WARNING/2 (\lambda)

latex exited with error: [stderr] [stdout] This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/TeX Live for SUSE Linux) restricted \write18 enabled. entering extended mode (./math.tex LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, ge rman-x-2011-07-01, ngerman-x-2011-07-01, afrikaans, ancientgreek, ibycus, arabi c, armenian, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danis h, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, esperanto, estonian, ethiopic, farsi, finnis h, french, friulan, galician, german, ngerman, swissgerman, monogreek, greek, h ungarian, icelandic, assamese, bengali, gujarati, hindi, kannada, malayalam, ma rathi, oriya, panjabi, tamil, telugu, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, kurmanji, lao, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolianlmc, bokmal, nyn orsk, polish, portuguese, romanian, romansh, russian, sanskrit, serbian, serbia nc, slovak, slovenian, spanish, swedish, turkish, turkmen, ukrainian, uppersorb ian, welsh, loaded. (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8x.def’ not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop. <read *> l.131 \endinput ^^M No pages of output. Transcript written on math.log.

the Poisson distribution

System Message: WARNING/2 (f(k; \lambda))

latex exited with error: [stderr] [stdout] This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/TeX Live for SUSE Linux) restricted \write18 enabled. entering extended mode (./math.tex LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, ge rman-x-2011-07-01, ngerman-x-2011-07-01, afrikaans, ancientgreek, ibycus, arabi c, armenian, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danis h, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, esperanto, estonian, ethiopic, farsi, finnis h, french, friulan, galician, german, ngerman, swissgerman, monogreek, greek, h ungarian, icelandic, assamese, bengali, gujarati, hindi, kannada, malayalam, ma rathi, oriya, panjabi, tamil, telugu, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, kurmanji, lao, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolianlmc, bokmal, nyn orsk, polish, portuguese, romanian, romansh, russian, sanskrit, serbian, serbia nc, slovak, slovenian, spanish, swedish, turkish, turkmen, ukrainian, uppersorb ian, welsh, loaded. (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8x.def’ not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop. <read *> l.131 \endinput ^^M No pages of output. Transcript written on math.log.

describes the probability of

System Message: WARNING/2 (k)

latex exited with error: [stderr] [stdout] This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/TeX Live for SUSE Linux) restricted \write18 enabled. entering extended mode (./math.tex LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, ge rman-x-2011-07-01, ngerman-x-2011-07-01, afrikaans, ancientgreek, ibycus, arabi c, armenian, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danis h, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, esperanto, estonian, ethiopic, farsi, finnis h, french, friulan, galician, german, ngerman, swissgerman, monogreek, greek, h ungarian, icelandic, assamese, bengali, gujarati, hindi, kannada, malayalam, ma rathi, oriya, panjabi, tamil, telugu, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, kurmanji, lao, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolianlmc, bokmal, nyn orsk, polish, portuguese, romanian, romansh, russian, sanskrit, serbian, serbia nc, slovak, slovenian, spanish, swedish, turkish, turkmen, ukrainian, uppersorb ian, welsh, loaded. (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8x.def’ not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop. <read *> l.131 \endinput ^^M No pages of output. Transcript written on math.log.

events occurring within the observed interval

System Message: WARNING/2 (\lambda)

latex exited with error: [stderr] [stdout] This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/TeX Live for SUSE Linux) restricted \write18 enabled. entering extended mode (./math.tex LaTeX2e <2011/06/27> Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, ge rman-x-2011-07-01, ngerman-x-2011-07-01, afrikaans, ancientgreek, ibycus, arabi c, armenian, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danis h, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, esperanto, estonian, ethiopic, farsi, finnis h, french, friulan, galician, german, ngerman, swissgerman, monogreek, greek, h ungarian, icelandic, assamese, bengali, gujarati, hindi, kannada, malayalam, ma rathi, oriya, panjabi, tamil, telugu, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, kurmanji, lao, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolianlmc, bokmal, nyn orsk, polish, portuguese, romanian, romansh, russian, sanskrit, serbian, serbia nc, slovak, slovenian, spanish, swedish, turkish, turkmen, ukrainian, uppersorb ian, welsh, loaded. (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size12.clo)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8x.def’ not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop. <read *> l.131 \endinput ^^M No pages of output. Transcript written on math.log.

.

Because the output is limited to the range of the C long type, a ValueError is raised when lam is within 10 sigma of the maximum representable value.

References

[R186]

Weisstein, Eric W. “Poisson Distribution.” From MathWorld–A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoissonDistribution.html

[R187]

Wikipedia, “Poisson distribution”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

Examples

Draw samples from the distribution:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> s = np.random.poisson(5, 10000)

Display histogram of the sample:

>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> count, bins, ignored = plt.hist(s, 14, normed=True)
>>> plt.show()

(Source code, png, pdf)