DISCRETE UNIFORM DISTRIBUTION

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Learning goals
To understand the discrete uniform distribution To study examples of discrete uniform distributions

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Examples
The gender of a baby-to-be-born has an equal probability of being male or 1 female. For these two possibilities, we can say that each has a probability of 2 A badminton player would be playing exactly 2 matches in the next tournament. The player has an equal chance of winning 0 matches, 1 match or both the 1 matches. Each of these possibilities has a probability of 3 On a similar note, each face of a die has equal probability of appearance, when 1 thrown once. Therefore there is chance of any of these faces showing up
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Suppose that an ice-cream parlour sells one special flavour every day and every flavour is repeated every 10 days. For a customer who does not know the sequence in which the flavours are sold, there is equal chance of getting to eat one of these ten flavours on a random day
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Definition
Any experiment for which we can establish that each of its outcome is equally likely, a uniformly distributed variable could emerge If a random variable takes values (1,2,... ) and each of these distinct values has an equal or uniform probability of occurrence, such a variable is said to follow Uniform distribution with probability mass function, 1 = = where k = 1,2,3, , n Denote this variable as ~(1,2, , )
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Uniform distribution
Outcome number
1 2 3 k n 1 1

Value of variable X
1 2 3

Probability 1 1 1

Due to the shape of the graph, Uniform distribution is also called the Rectangular distribution
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Uniform distribution (contd.)

We must be careful about the range of value taken up by Suppose takes values 0,1,2,,, then there are (+1) equally likely outcomes and hence 1 = = + 1 Essentially, a uniformly distributed variable can take each of the discrete values in an interval [, ] where ( ) = ( 1)
The values do not have to be sequential or starting from 0 or 1
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Properties of Uniform distribution

It is the simplest probability distribution
For ~ 1,2, , ,

=
=

(+1) 2
(2 1) 12

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Thank you

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