MATH 335: Fumbles and the Poisson

Fumbles Example

Here is the problem discussed in class. The data are number of fumbles occurring in all football games played in a single weekend of NCAA Division I football. See Case Study 4.2.3.

Here are the data:


3 1 2 4 6 2 1 3 3 1 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 1 1 5 2 4 1 3 3 4 3 3 1 2 1 3 2 2
2 2 2 3 0 2 1 0 0 2 0 4 0 5 2 1 3 2 3 2 5 2 2 4 1 2 4 4 5 1 1 4 1 2
1 6 2 3 2 2 0 7 4 1 1 3 1 2 3 5 2 1 2 2 1 3 1 3 5 4 4 0 1 4 6 1 2 4
0 3 4 1 5 4 3 5

Get into R. Then enter the data via the scan function.

fumbles <- scan()

R will prompt you for data, just select the 110 data, paste them into the R command line, and then hit the key one final time to end the scan. Here is the R code for computing expected values:

# First histogram the data.
# Breaks gives natural break points for integer data.

br <- seq(min(fumbles)-.5,max(fumbles)+.5)
hist(fumbles, breaks = br)

#Now, we calculate expected values.  Can you figure out what the calculations
# are doing?

m <- mean(fumbles)
n <- length(fumbles)

k <- seq(min(fumbles),max(fumbles))
expected <- n*exp(-m)*m^k/factorial(k)

cbind(table(fumbles), expected)

The results of this code, which follow, show a strong adherence to the Poisson probability model:

  obs expected
0  8  8.550031
1 24 21.841443
2 27 27.897479
3 20 23.755126
4 17 15.170887
5 10  7.750944
6  3  3.300023
7  1  1.204294

Note: obs = observed counts

Poisson approximation to binomial

Another example showing the Poisson approximation to the binomial, with n=1000 and p=1/500. For the Poisson, lambda=np=2.


 k  binom  Poisson
 0 0.13506 0.13534
 1 0.27067 0.27067
 2 0.27094 0.27067
 3 0.18063 0.18045
 4 0.09022 0.09022
 5 0.03602 0.03609
 6 0.01197 0.01203
 7 0.00341 0.00344
 8 0.00085 0.00086
 9 0.00019 0.00019
10 0.00004 0.00004