Quantitative Understanding in Biology 1.2 Probability ...

Quantitative Understanding in Biology 1.2 Probability Density Functions and the Normal

Distribution

Jason Banfelder

September 14th, 2023

1 The Binomial Distribution

Consider a series of n repeated, independent yes/no experiments (these are known as Bernoulli trials), each of which has a probability p of being `successful'. The binomial distribution gives the probability of observing exactly k successes. In R, the dbinom function will compute this probability for you: dbinom(k, n, p) Note that the binomial distribution is a discrete distribution. That is, it only makes sense for integer values of k. You can't ask: what is the probability of observing 4.3 heads in ten coin tosses. Also note that the binomial distribution has two parameters: n and p. We can print and plot the probabilities of observing k heads in ten flips of a fair coin:

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