Quantitative Analysis for Management, 13/e

2.10 The Poisson Distribution

An important discrete probability distribution is the Poisson distribution.¹ We examine it because of its key role in complementing the exponential distribution in queuing theory in Chapter 12. The distribution describes situations in which customers arrive independently during a certain time interval, and the number of arrivals depends on the length of the time interval. Examples are patients arriving at a health clinic, customers arriving at a bank window, passengers arriving at an airport, and telephone calls going through a central exchange.

1 This distribution, derived by Siméon Denis Poisson in 1837, is pronounced “pwah-sahn.”

The Poisson probability distribution is used in many queuing models to represent ...