Thread: Exponential/Gamma distribution

Hello,

Can someone, please, explain simply the difference between distributions from the subject with simple examples of use.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards.

I'm not very familiar with Gamma distribution but it looks like a continuous version of Poisson distribution (correct me if I'm wrong). If it is, I can explain the difference.

The exponential distribution is used for modeling of life time of objects for which the probability of dying within the hour does not depend on its age. That's the case of radioactive particle.
For the Poisson distribution however (and I'm extrapolating for the Gamma distribution without being sure it works), we suppose that there is a sort of event that can happen at any time with an exponential distribution, and the Gamma distribution gives us the number of such events that actually happened during a fixed limit of time. That's the case for instance if we consider radioactive particles that we observe for one day, and if we want to model the proportion of radioactive particles that will have exploded.

Le-nguyen.hoang, thank you for your response.


Isn't exponential distribution just a special case of gamma distribution??