This is an introductory book on discrete statistical distributions and its applications. It discusses only those that are widely used in the applications of probability and statistics in everyday life. The purpose is to give a self-contained introduction to classical discrete distributions in statistics. Instead of compiling the important formulas (which are available in many other textbooks), we focus on important applications of each distribution in various applied fields like bioinformatics, genomics, ecology, electronics, epidemiology, management, reliability, etc., making this book an indispensable resource for researchers and practitioners in several scientific fields. Examples are drawn from different fields. An up-to-date reference appears at the end of the book.


Chapter 1 introduces the basic concepts on random variables, and gives a simple method to find the mean deviation (MD) of discrete distributions. The Bernoulli and binomial distributions are discussedin detail in Chapter 2. A short chapter on discrete uniform distribution appears next. The next two chapters are on geometric and negative binomial distributions. Chapter 6 discusses the Poisson distribution in-depth, including applications in various fields. Chapter 7 is on hypergeometric distribution. As most textbooks in the market either do not discuss, or contain only brief description of the negative hypergeometric distribution, we have included an entire chapter on it. A short chapter on logarithmic series distribution follows it, in which a theorem to find the kth moment of logarithmic distribution using (k-1)th moment of zero-truncated geometric distribution is presented. The last chapter is on multinomial distribution and its applications.


The primary users of this book are professionals and practitioners in various fields of engineering and the applied sciences. It will also be of use to graduate students in statistics, research scholars in science disciplines, and teachers of statistics, biostatistics, biotechnology, education, and psychology.