Probability Mass Functions

Abstract

This chapter focuses on probability mass functions. One of the primary uses of Bayesian inference is to estimate parameters. To do so, it is necessary to first build a good understanding of probability distributions. This chapter introduces the idea of a random variable and presents general concepts associated with probability distributions for discrete random variables. It starts off by discussing the concept of a function and goes on to describe how a random variable is a type of function. The binomial distribution and the Bernoulli distribution are then used as examples of the probability mass functions (pmf’s). The pmfs can be used to specify prior distributions, likelihoods, likelihood profiles and/or posterior distributions in Bayesian inference.