On the average, 1.8 customers per minute arrive at any one of the checkout counters of a grocery store. What type of probability distribution can be used to find out the probability that there will be no customer arriving at a checkout counter?
A) Poisson distribution
B) hypergeometric distribution
C) binomial distribution
D) none of the above

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Poisson distribution is used to model the arrival of events over a continuous time interval, such as the arrival of customers at a checkout counter. The probability of no customer arriving in a given minute can be calculated using the Poisson distribution with a mean of 1.8 arrivals per minute. The hypergeometric distribution is used when sampling without replacement from a finite population with two distinct values, while the binomial distribution is used to model the number of successes in a fixed number of trials with two outcomes. Neither of these distributions are suitable for modeling customer arrivals at a grocery store.

On the Average, 1