Poisson Distribution in Google Sheets
Count how many times something rare will happen.
Interactive Sandbox
10,000 simulations running live in your browser.
When to use it
The Poisson distribution models the number of events occurring in a fixed period when events happen independently at a known average rate (λ). It's the right tool for counting: customer support tickets per day, system failures per quarter, late deliveries per month. Unlike continuous distributions, Poisson only produces whole numbers, reflecting the discrete reality of counted events.
- Customer support volume forecasting for staffing models
- IT incident rate modeling for SLA risk
- Insurance claim frequency estimation
- Defect count modeling in manufacturing quality control
How to build it
Native Sheets Formula
=POISSON.DIST(k, lambda, FALSE) Using native RAND() requires you to copy this formula 10,000 times manually, which severely lags the browser.
The MonteSheet Way
MonteSheet uses a local browser engine to run 100,000 iterations in 4 seconds without writing a single formula.
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