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) binomial distribution
B) Poisson distribution
C) all of the above
D) none of the above

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Poisson distribution is used to model the number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space, given a known average rate of occurrence. In this case, the average rate of arrival of customers is given (1.8 per minute) and we are interested in the probability of no customers arriving at a checkout counter in a given minute. Therefore, the Poisson distribution is the appropriate choice for this scenario. The binomial distribution would be used for a scenario where there are a fixed number of trials with a binary outcome (e.g. success/failure) and a known probability of success for each trial.

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