14th February 2024

Binomial distribution

Categorical variables with two mutually exclusive outcomes (male or female, disease or no disease, heads or tails) have a binomial distribution. Binomial distribution describes the probability distribution of all possible outcomes (i.e. probability of obtaining five heads in a row) for a sequence of independent observations (i.e. five coin tosses).

Normal approximation of the binomial

Binomial distribution may appear different to a normal distribution when the number of observations is small. As the number of observations increases, the binomial distribution will approximate a normal distribution.