The Geometric distribution can be thought of as a generalization
of the Bernoulli()
distribution where we ask: "if I keep flipping a
coin with probability p
of heads, what is the probability I need
\(k\) flips before I get my first heads?" The Geometric
distribution is a special case of Negative Binomial distribution.
Details
We recommend reading this documentation on https://alexpghayes.github.io/distributions3/, where the math will render with additional detail and much greater clarity.
In the following, let \(X\) be a Geometric random variable with
success probability p
= \(p\). Note that there are multiple
parameterizations of the Geometric distribution.
Support: 0 < p < 1, \(x = 0, 1, \dots\)
Mean: \(\frac{1-p}{p}\)
Variance: \(\frac{1-p}{p^2}\)
Probability mass function (p.m.f):
$$ P(X = x) = p(1-p)^x, $$
Cumulative distribution function (c.d.f):
$$ P(X \le x) = 1 - (1-p)^{x+1} $$
Moment generating function (m.g.f):
$$ E(e^{tX}) = \frac{pe^t}{1 - (1-p)e^t} $$
See also
Other discrete distributions:
Bernoulli()
,
Binomial()
,
Categorical()
,
HurdleNegativeBinomial()
,
HurdlePoisson()
,
HyperGeometric()
,
Multinomial()
,
NegativeBinomial()
,
Poisson()
,
PoissonBinomial()
,
ZINegativeBinomial()
,
ZIPoisson()
,
ZTNegativeBinomial()
,
ZTPoisson()