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In probability theory and statistics, the exponential distribution or negative exponential distribution is the probability distribution of the distance between events in a Poisson point process, i.e., a process in which events occur continuously and independently at a constant average rate; the distance parameter could be any meaningful mono-dimensional measure of the process, such as time ...
Informally, the expected value is the mean of the possible values a random variable can take, weighted by the probability of those outcomes. Since it is obtained through arithmetic, the expected value sometimes may not even be included in the sample data set; it is not the value you would "expect" to get in reality.
The proposition in probability theory known as the law of total expectation, [1] the law of iterated expectations [2] (LIE), Adam's law, [3] the tower rule, [4] and the smoothing theorem, [5] among other names, states that if is a random variable whose expected value is defined, and is any random variable on the same probability space, then
This proposition is (sometimes) known as the law of the unconscious statistician because of a purported tendency to think of the aforementioned law as the very definition of the expected value of a function g(X) and a random variable X, rather than (more formally) as a consequence of the true definition of expected value. [1]
The terms "distribution" and "family" are often used loosely: Specifically, an exponential family is a set of distributions, where the specific distribution varies with the parameter; [a] however, a parametric family of distributions is often referred to as "a distribution" (like "the normal distribution", meaning "the family of normal distributions"), and the set of all exponential families ...
For example, suppose that X is a random variable, the lifetime of a car engine, expressed in terms of "number of miles driven until the engine breaks down". It is clear, based on our intuition, that an engine which has already been driven for 300,000 miles will have a much lower X than would a second (equivalent) engine which has only been ...
For some distributions, the minimum value of several independent random variables is a member of the same family, with different parameters: Bernoulli distribution, Geometric distribution, Exponential distribution, Extreme value distribution, Pareto distribution, Rayleigh distribution, Weibull distribution. Examples:
The Cauchy distribution, an example of a distribution which does not have an expected value or a variance. In physics it is usually called a Lorentzian profile, and is associated with many processes, including resonance energy distribution, impact and natural spectral line broadening and quadratic stark line broadening.