title: Poisson Distribution in Java (correctness?)
body: <p>I have to generate data for a Poisson distribution. My range is n = 1000 up to 100K. Where n is the number of data elements; k varies from 1 to n. It says to use lambda as n/2</p>
  
  <p>I have never taken stats and have no idea how to get the correct curve here. I can feed it lambda as n/2, but do I vary K from 0-n? I tried this (passing k in as a parameter) and when I graphed the data it ramped up, not a fish tail. What am I doing wrong, or am I doing it correctly? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>
  
  <p>I have this code in java from Knuth.</p>
  
  <pre><code>static double poissonRandomNumber(int lambda) {
      double L = Math.exp(-lambda);
      int k = 0;
      double p = 1;
      do {
          k = k + 1;
          double u = Math.random();
          p = p * u;
      } while (p &gt; L);
      return k - 1;
  }
  </code></pre>