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Poisson {base}R Documentation

The Poisson Distribution

Description

These functions provide information about the Poisson distribution with parameter lambda. dpois gives the density, ppois gives the distribution function qpois gives the quantile function and rpois generates random deviates.

Usage

dpois(x, lambda)
ppois(q, lambda)
qpois(p, lambda)
rpois(n, lambda)

Arguments

x

vector of (non-negative integer) quantiles.

q

vector of quantiles.

p

vector of probabilities.

n

number of random values to return.

lambda

vector of positive means.

Details

The Poisson distribution has density

p(x) = \frac{{\lambda}^{x} {e}^{-\lambda}}{x!}

for x = 0, 1, 2, \ldots.

If an element of x is not integer, the result of dpois is zero, with a warning.

The quantile is left continuous: qpois(q, lambda) is the largest integer x such that P(X <= x) < q.

See Also

dbinom for the binomial and dnbinom for the negative binomial distribution.

Examples

-log(dpois(0:7, lambda=1) * gamma(1+ 0:7))
Ni <- rpois(50, lam= 4); table(factor(Ni, 0:max(Ni)))

par(mfrow = c(2, 1))
x <- seq(-0.01, 5, 0.01)
plot(x, ppois(x, 1), type="s", ylab="F(x)", main="Poisson(1) CDF")
plot(x, pbinom(x, 100, 0.01),type="s", ylab="F(x)",
     main="Binomial(100, 0.01) CDF")


[Package base version 0.90 ]