3 ms·

Is it a Poisson Distribution?

• tajen 11y ago
  I'm not mathematician, but yes there have been studies to show that bombs sometimes fell in clusters, and those clusters were symptomatic of a perfectly random distribution, and that the nazi didn't have the skills/time to target some places more than others. In fact, if a function returned a homogeneous grid of spots, then it would be optimized for homogeneity, not randomness.
• empiricus 11y ago
  I can't see any possible reason for the distribution to be Poisson. It should be completely random, but the representation on the map is too regular.. Looks like the apparent regularity is an artifact of the way the data is filtered for display on the map for some scales; if I zoom out/in the fully random distribution becomes more visible.
  • bweitzman 11y ago
    Poisson distributions are completely random, so I'm guessing you mean either a uniform or normal distribution. failrate is making a reference to the Thomas Pynchon novel "Gravity's Rainbow", in which the Poisson distribution of the bombing of London is a major plot point. And I do believe the author is correct by claiming it is a Poisson distribution, since we are talking a number of events per km^2.
    • empiricus 11y ago
      Thanks, I see now. I was thinking that Poisson distributions look like distributions generated by Poisson disk sampling (with which I was more familiar).
• resonation 11y ago
  Pick bananas. He trudges through black compost in to the hothouse. He feels he's about to shit. The missile, sixty miles high, must be coming up on the peak of its trajectory by now... beginning its fall... now...