5. Data generating distributions

This week we are thinking about how a physical process (such as tossing a coin 10 times) generates a distribution of possible outcomes (frequency of getting 1 head, 2 heads, 3 heads… 10 heads).

We will look at one distribution in which the link between the physical process (coin toss) and probability distribution can be fairly directly understood, namely the binomial distriution

We will then see how a binomial process (such as tossing a coin) applied over many trials (coin tosses) gives rise to a variable (number of heads) that follows a normal distribution