In this chapter we turn to the important question of determining the distribution of a sum of independent random variables in terms of the distributions of the individual constituents. In this section...In this chapter we turn to the important question of determining the distribution of a sum of independent random variables in terms of the distributions of the individual constituents. In this section we consider only sums of discrete random variables, reserving the case of continuous random variables for the next section.
A random variable is a quantitative variable that assigns a number to each outcome in the sample space of a given random experiment. A random variable can be either discrete (having specific values)...A random variable is a quantitative variable that assigns a number to each outcome in the sample space of a given random experiment. A random variable can be either discrete (having specific values) or continuous (any value in a continuous range). The use of random variables is most common in probability and statistics as they quantify outcomes of random occurrences.
