Houjun Liu

probability mass function

PMF is a function that maps possible outcomes of a discrete random variables to the corresponding actual probabilities.

For random variable \(Y\), we have:

\begin{equation} f(k) = P(Y=k) \end{equation}

and \(f\) is a function that is the PMF, which is the mapping between a random variable and a value it takes on to the probability that the random variable takes on that value.

Shorthand

\begin{equation} P(Y=k) = p(y), where\ y=k \end{equation}

its written smaller \(y\) represents a case of \(Y\) where \(Y=y\).

Properties of PMD

\begin{equation} 0 \leq P(x) \leq 1 \end{equation}

and

\begin{equation} \sum_{}^{} P(x) = 1 \end{equation}