Bahrain Teachers College
University of Bahrain
TC2MA415: Introductory Statistics Discrete Probability Distribution
Rules of a Discrete Probability Distribution
1. The sum of all probabilities must be equal to 1.
∑ 𝑃(𝑥) = 1
2. All probabilities must be between 0 and 1
0 ≤ 𝑃(𝑥) ≤ 1
Example 1: Determine if the following is a discrete probability distribution:
x 1 2 3 4 5
P(x) 0.15 0.24 0.36 0.40 -0.15
The Mean or Expected Value of a Discrete Random Variable
To find the Mean (also known as the Expected value) of a discrete random variable, we take each
x-value and multiply by its probability. We then add together all the multiplications. This is
represented by the following formula:
𝜇𝑋 = ∑ 𝑥 ∙ 𝑃(𝑥)
1
Example 2: Determine the mean/Expected value of the following discrete probability
distribution.
x P(x)
1 0.04
2 0.24
3 0.36
4 0.30
5 0.06
Example 3: Find the variance and standard deviation using the data below.
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (𝜎 2 ) = ∑(𝑥 − 𝜇𝑥 )2 ∙ 𝑃(𝑥)
𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (𝜎) = √∑(𝑥 − 𝜇𝑥 )2 ∙ 𝑃(𝑥)
x P(x)
1 0.04
2 0.24
3 0.36
4 0.30
5 0.06
2
Example 4. The number of suits sold per day at Suit World is shown in the probability distribution below.
x P(x)
19 0.2
20 0.2
21 0.3
22 0.2
23 0.1
a. Find the mean, variance, and standard deviation of the distribution.
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