Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas

Common distributions

While there are many probability distributions, each with specific use cases, there are some that we will come across often. The Gaussian, or normal, looks like a bell curve and is parameterized by its mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ). The standard normal (Z) has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Many things in nature happen to follow the normal distribution, such as heights. Note that testing if our distribution is normal is not trivial. Check the Further reading section for more information.

The Poisson distribution is a discrete distribution that is often used to model arrivals. The time between arrivals can be modeled with the exponential distribution. Both are defined by their mean, lambda (λ). We will ...