A statistical distribution whose variables can take on only discrete values. Abramowitz and Stegun (1972, p. 929) give a table of the parameters of most common discrete distributions.

A discrete distribution with probability function defined over , 2, ..., has distribution function

and population mean

Abramowitz, M. and Stegun, I. A. (Eds.). Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables, 9th printing. New York: Dover, pp. 927 and 929, 1972.

Evans, M.; Hastings, N.; and Peacock, B. Statistical Distributions, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 2000.

McLaughlin, M. "Common Probability Distributions." http://www.geocities.com/~mikemclaughlin/math_stat/Dists/Compendium.html.

Wilmmer, G. and Altmann, G. Thesaurus of Univariate Discrete Probability Distributions. Essen, Germany: STAMM, 1999.

CITE THIS AS:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Discrete Distribution." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DiscreteDistribution.html