## The Annals of Mathematical Statistics

### On the Convergence of Binomial to Poisson Distributions

#### Abstract

Following the work of Poisson (1837), there has been considerable practical and theoretical interest in how well the Poisson distribution approximates the binomial distribution. The approximation, which was initially suggested by a limit theorem (see (1) below), has been shown in numerical examples to be very good for certain binomial parameters within a useful range. (See Feller (1950), page 143.) Subsequently, (nonasymptotic) theoretical results have confirmed the approximation's accuracy. (See (2.1) and (2.2) below.) The purpose of this note is to demonstrate, with an elementary argument, that the binomial distributions converge very strongly to the Poisson distributions.

#### Article information

Source
Ann. Math. Statist., Volume 42, Number 5 (1971), 1735-1736.

Dates
First available in Project Euclid: 27 April 2007

https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoms/1177693172

Digital Object Identifier
doi:10.1214/aoms/1177693172

Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet)
MR345171

Zentralblatt MATH identifier
0235.60033

JSTOR