Simulating from a Poisson and a binomial
If we were flipping 100,000 coins that each have a .2% chance of coming up heads, you could use a Poisson(2) distribution to approximate it. Let's check that through simulation.
This exercise is part of the course
Foundations of Probability in R
Exercise instructions
- Generate 100,000 draws from the Binomial(1000, .002) distribution. Save it as
binom_sample
. - Generate 100,000 draws from the Poisson distribution that approximates this binomial distribution, using the
rpois()
function. Save it aspoisson_sample
. - Compare the two distributions with the
compare_histograms()
function. (Remember that this takes two arguments: the two samples that are to be compared).
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Draw a random sample of 100,000 from the Binomial(1000, .002) distribution
binom_sample <-
# Draw a random sample of 100,000 from the Poisson approximation
poisson_sample <-
# Compare the two distributions with the compare_histograms function