If a coin that comes up heads with probability

is tossed

times, the number of heads observed follows a binomial probability distribution. The Poisson probability distribution can be regarded as a limiting case of the binomial distribution as the number of tosses grows and the probability of heads on a given toss is adjusted to keep the expected number of heads constant. More precisely, if

is a binomial random variable with parameters

and

, then the probability distribution for

approaches a Poisson distribution with parameter λ as

approaches infinity.