The Exponential Distribution

Main Concept

The exponential distribution is a continuous memoryless distribution that

describes the time between events in a Poisson process. It is a continuous
analogue of the geometric distribution.

In order for an event to be described by the exponential distribution, there are

three conditions in which the event must hold:
Independence: The events occur in disjoint intervals (non-overlapping)
Individuality: Two or more events cannot occur simultaneously
Uniformity: Each event occurs at a constant rate

If random variable X follows an

exponential distribution, the
distribution of waiting times between
events is defined by the following
probability density function:

for

Where: is the constant rate or

intensity at which the event occurs at
and t is the length of time between
two events.

The cumulative distribution function is

defined as:

for

Properties

PDF The probability density function

CDF The cumulative distribution

 function

Mean E The expected value of a random

(X) variable

Variance Represented by the symbol ,

Var(X) representing how much variation
or spread exists from the mean
value

where = is the intensity or the rate at which an event occurs.

Example
Suppose you are testing a new software, and a bug causes errors randomly at
a constant rate of three times per hour. What is the probability that the first
bug will occur within the first ten minutes?

= 3 per hour and t = 1/6 hours (10 minutes)

P(X < 1/6) = = 0.393

Therefore the probability that the first bug will occur in the next 10 minutes is
0.393.

Change the intensity of the event and time t to observe the change in the
exponential distribution and the corresponding probability value:
 rate of event ( ) =

0,0 1,0 2,0 3,0 4,0

3.00

time between events (t) =

0,0 2,0 4,0 6,0 8,0 10,0

0.17