Project Overview

Consider a process in which events occur randomly over a specified interval. The interval can be time, area, distance or other appropriate sectioning. Amazingly, with a basic assumption of independence, the Poisson distribution can be used to model all such random processes.

• Customer arrivals at a gas station

• Radioactive decay

• Calls to a help desk

• Health statistics

• Traffic fatalities

• Web site usage

This project investigates web site usage as a Poisson process and uses real-time data to establish a Poisson model. The model is then used to predict web site usage. The animation below shows a random distribution of points overlaid with a Poisson distribution.