Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Examining The Accuracy Of The Normal Approximation To The Poisson Random Variable, Wesley Jacob Rich

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Because the Poisson distribution is discrete, it is sometimes useful to use the continuous normal distribution as an approximation. In doing so, determining the accuracy of the approximation is important. Some issues of interest include: knowing how the error depends on the Poisson parameter, knowing when the approximation overestimates or underestimates the distribution, bounding the magnitude of the error, and determining if the approximation can be improved. This paper addresses these issues by examining how two types of absolute error measurements are affected by variations in the Poisson parameter; changes in the relative error are also examined. Generally, the error …