A Poisson probability distribution of a discrete random variable gives the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space, if these events happen at a known average r...A Poisson probability distribution of a discrete random variable gives the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space, if these events happen at a known average rate and independently of the time since the last event. The Poisson distribution may be used to approximate the binomial, if the probability of success is "small" (less than or equal to 0.05) and the number of trials is "large" (greater than or equal to 20).