Tell me more ×
Cross Validated is a question and answer site for statisticians, data analysts, data miners and data visualization experts. It's 100% free, no registration required.

Let's say, we have some random event. We also have a hist of time intervals between two events, based on statistical data. For example, a frequency distribution:

[100,30,15,10,7,6,5,5,4,4]

Each bin value corresponds to length of time interval between two events. 1st bin corresponds to [0,1) seconds, 2nd bin is for [1,2) seconds, 3rd is for [2,3) secs and so on.

How would I predict the time that it might take to get K events?

If we normalize and cumulatively add the bin's value, we can get a probability hist, each bin's value is P(one event in time < bin's edge). But how would I get such a probability hist for K events? P(K events in time < bin's edge)

share|improve this question
3  
Anyway, read this first en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process – belisarius Oct 8 '12 at 18:09
Google for negative binomial distribution. In addition to Wikipedia, one good site is math.uah.edu/stat. – David B. Chorlian Feb 22 at 23:28

migrated from mathematica.stackexchange.com Oct 8 '12 at 20:04

Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.