Recall your experience when you take an elevator.
Think about usually how long it takes for the elevator to arrive.
Most likely, the experience may be it frequently comes in a short while and once in a while, it may come pretty late.
In another word, if we want to use a random variable to measure the waiting time for elevator to come, we can say that:◦ 1. It must be continuous.◦ 2. Smaller values have larger probability and
larger values have smaller probability.◦ Think about Geometric distribution, is there any
similarities?
Usually, exponential distribution is used to describe the time or distance until some event happens.
It is in the form of:
◦ where x ≥ 0 and μ>0. μ is the mean or expected value.
1( )
x
f x e
In this case,
Then the mean or expected value is
( ) xf x e 1
1
00
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
x
R(x)
We also use CDF to find probabilities under exponential distribution.
Or
00
0
0
( ) ( ) 1xx
P x x f x dx e
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )b
a
x
a b b a
x
P x x x f x dx P x x P x x
0 0
( ) ( ) ( ) 1 (1 )b a a bb b a
a
x x x xx x x
x
f x dx f x dx f x dx e e e e
E(X)= μ or
Var(X)= μ2 or
1
2
1