Edexcel S2 2008 January — Question 3

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS2 (Statistics 2)
Year2008
SessionJanuary
TopicPoisson Distribution
TypeState conditions only

3. (a) State two conditions under which a Poisson distribution is a suitable model to use in statistical work. The number of cars passing an observation point in a 10 minute interval is modelled by a Poisson distribution with mean 1.
(b) Find the probability that in a randomly chosen 60 minute period there will be
  1. exactly 4 cars passing the observation point,
  2. at least 5 cars passing the observation point. The number of other vehicles, other than cars, passing the observation point in a 60 minute interval is modelled by a Poisson distribution with mean 12.
    (c) Find the probability that exactly 1 vehicle, of any type, passes the observation point in a 10 minute period.