The number of bags arriving on the baggage claim conveyor belt in a 3-minute time period would best be modelled with the ___.
A) binomial distribution
B) hypergeometric distribution
C) Poisson distribution
D) hyperbinomial distribution
E) geometric distribution

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Poisson distribution is used to model the number of events that occur in a fixed interval of time or space, given the average rate of occurrence per interval. In this case, we are interested in the number of bags arriving on the conveyor belt in a fixed 3-minute time period, and the arrival of each bag is a random event that occurs independently of other events. The Poisson distribution is appropriate for this type of scenario. The other choices are not appropriate because they either do not apply to the scenario (geometric and hyperbinomial distributions) or require additional information that is not given (binomial and hypergeometric distributions).

The Number of Bags Arriving on the Baggage Claim Conveyor