Lecture 39 Blog, ECE302 Spring 2013, Prof. Boutin

Monday April 15, 2013 (Week 15) - See Course Outline.

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In Lecture 39, we continued trying to understand the relationship between the Poisson random process and the binomial counting process. First we re-emphasized how the pmf of a Poisson random variable approximates the pmf of a binomial random variable by looking at a chess example (number of matches lost by Kasparov playing against n players.) We then went over the "true" definition of a Poisson process, where the process is described as a counting process with 3 properties (time homogeneity, independence, and small interval probability). We spent a lot of time explaining the third property.

Action items for students (to be completed before next lecture)

  • Read Section 9.4 in the textbook.
  • Solve problems 9.34, 9.35, 9.36 in the textbook. (You will hand in your solution as part of homework 7.)

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Next: Lecture 40


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