In: Statistics and Probability
Based on recent data, there are on average 1.3 days per winter where snowfall reaches more than 6 inches in Central Park, New York City. We’ll call these “snow days”.
Assume that there were more than 2 “snow days” this winter. What is the chance that exactly 4 such days occur?
When we are interested in the occurrence of certain events in a fixed interval of time, Poisson distribution follows.
Let the random variable, X = number of days per winter where snowfall reaches more than 6 inches in Central Park, New York City.
The random variable X follows a Poisson distribution with mean = 1.3 days
Using the conditional distribution formula,
where,
and
Now,
For calculation purposes, the probabilities such that P(X=4) and P(X>2) are obtained in excel using the function =POIS.DIST(). The screenshot is shown below,