Probability Distributions: Poisson vs. Binomial Distribution | by Sunghyun Ahn

Using soccer to understand the difference between Poisson & binomial: Probability for Data Science Series (3)

10 min read

Dec 10, 2024

If you are not a paid member on Medium, I make my stories available for free: Friends link

The Poisson and Binomial distributions are two fundamental discrete probability distributions used in data science and statistics. While both involve counting occurrences or successes, they differ in their underlying assumptions and use cases.

If you’re like me, you might sometimes question whether to analyze a problem using the Poisson or Binomial distribution — especially if you haven’t worked with them recently.

To clarify this, let’s look into the characteristics of each distribution, when to use them, and how to distinguish between the two.