Poisson distribution in SciPy - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Poisson Distribution with SciPy

📖 Scenario: Imagine you work at a call center. You want to understand how many calls you might get in an hour. The number of calls follows a pattern called the Poisson distribution, which helps predict how often events happen in a fixed time.

🎯 Goal: You will create a small program to calculate the probability of getting a certain number of calls in an hour using the Poisson distribution from the scipy library.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable with the average number of calls per hour

Import the Poisson distribution function from scipy.stats

Calculate the probability of getting exactly 3 calls in an hour

Print the calculated probability

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Poisson distribution is used to model events like calls, arrivals, or errors happening randomly over time.

💼 Career

Data scientists use Poisson distribution to analyze and predict event counts in fields like customer service, traffic flow, and quality control.

1

Set the average number of calls

Create a variable called average_calls and set it to 5, which is the average number of calls received per hour.

SciPy

# Create the variable average_calls and set it to 5
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The average number of calls is a number, so just assign 5 to average_calls.

2

Import Poisson distribution from scipy.stats

Import the poisson function from the scipy.stats module.

SciPy

average_calls = 5
# Import poisson from scipy.stats
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use from scipy.stats import poisson to import the Poisson distribution function.

3

Calculate the probability of exactly 3 calls

Use the poisson.pmf function with average_calls and 3 to calculate the probability of getting exactly 3 calls. Store the result in a variable called prob_3_calls.

SciPy

average_calls = 5
from scipy.stats import poisson
# Calculate probability of exactly 3 calls and store in prob_3_calls
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use poisson.pmf(3, average_calls) to get the probability of 3 calls.

4

Print the probability result

Print the value of prob_3_calls to see the probability of exactly 3 calls in an hour.

SciPy

average_calls = 5
from scipy.stats import poisson
prob_3_calls = poisson.pmf(3, average_calls)
# Print the probability of exactly 3 calls
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(prob_3_calls) to display the probability.