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- Standard deviation of Poisson is given by
- So, for very large
, any Poissonly distributed random
variable y has mean 
and standard deviation
.
- We will soon show that counts in any counting experiment (e.g.,
number of raindrops in a bowl or particles in a high energy physical
experiment) is described by a Poisson random variable with (large)
parameter
of expected counts.
- The above result then translates into well known result that
counting experiment with N events has error
.
Geoffrey Fox, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University, gcf@npac.syr.edu