in a poisson-distribution, why is the probability of e-1 the same as e?

71 Views Asked by At

I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong, but I checked the Wiki page, and there seems to be 2 maximum points regardless of input, which the probability of getting the expected value minus 1 the same as getting the expected value. Why is this?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

1
On

We have $$P(X=n) = e^{-\lambda}\frac{\lambda^n}{n!}$$ for some $\lambda>0$.

For $\lambda=1$ this implies $P(X=0)=P(X=1)=\frac{1}{e}$

More generally, if $\lambda=n$, we get $P(X=n)=P(X=n-1)=e^{-n}\frac{n^{n-1}}{(n-1)!}$