Use the Poisson Distribution to find indicated probability.

Question

A naturalist leads whale watch trips every morning in March. Teh number of whales seen ha a Poisson distributyion with a mena of 2.2. Find the probability that on a randomly selected trip, the number of whales seen is 5.

Answer 1

Jen:
If you went to the wikipedia site suggested by SraJMcGin, you would have the formula for calculating probabilities following a poisson distribution.

The Poisson distrbution is
f(k,a) =(a^k)*(e^-a)/k! where a is the expected observed in a time period, and k is the actual observed, and e is the exponential e. (Go to the wikipedia site; they can express formulas much better than here on Jiskha.)

In your example a=2.2, and k=5. Plug these into your formula. Hint: I get about 4.8%