A '''Poisson process''', named after the French mathematician [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%A9on-Denis_Poisson Siméon-Denis Poisson] (1781–1840), is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process stochastic] [[process]] in which [[events]] occur continuously and [[independently]] of one another (the word [[event]] used here is not an instance of the [[concept]] of event frequently used in [[probability]] [[theory]]). Examples that are well-[[modeled]] as Poisson processes include the radioactive decay of [[atoms]], telephone calls arriving at a switchboard, page view requests to a website, and rainfall. | A '''Poisson process''', named after the French mathematician [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%A9on-Denis_Poisson Siméon-Denis Poisson] (1781–1840), is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process stochastic] [[process]] in which [[events]] occur continuously and [[independently]] of one another (the word [[event]] used here is not an instance of the [[concept]] of event frequently used in [[probability]] [[theory]]). Examples that are well-[[modeled]] as Poisson processes include the radioactive decay of [[atoms]], telephone calls arriving at a switchboard, page view requests to a website, and rainfall. |