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Counting Random Events
A New Kind of Counting
Sometimes we count events that happen randomly in time or space:
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Phone calls arriving at a call center per hour
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Accidents at an intersection per month
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Typos on a page of text
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Radioactive particles detected per second
What Makes These Special?
- ✓Events occur independently of each other
- ✓Events occur at a constant average rate
- ✓Two events can't happen at exactly the same instant
Key Insight: Unlike the binomial (fixed number of trials), here we're counting events in a continuous interval where the count could theoretically be 0, 1, 2, 3, ... with no upper limit!