Poisson's Theorem

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Poisson’s Theorem

 

(1) A theorem in probability theory that describes the behavior of the frequency of occurrence of some event in a sequence of independent trials. It is a special case of the law of large numbers.

(2) One of the limit theorems in probability theory. It permits an approximate estimate to be made of the probability of a given number of occurrences of an unlikely event in a large number of independent trials.

Both theorems were proved by S. D. Poisson in 1837.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.