random variable

A random variable is a real-valued function defined on a sample space. Random variables are the main tools used for modeling unknown quantities in statistical analyses. For each random variable X and each set C of real numbers, we could calculate the probability that X takes its value in C. The collection of all of these probabilities is the distribution of X. There are two major classes of distributions and random variables: discrete (this section) and continuous (Sec. 3.2). Discrete distributions are those that assign positive probability to at most countably many different values. A discrete distribution can be characterized by its probability function (p.f.), which specifies the probability that the random variable takes each of the different possible values. A random variable with a discrete distribution will be called a discrete random variable.

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