ABSTRACT

We begin with the observation that any finite probability distribution is a partition of unity. For example, for p+q = 1, the binomial distribution may be obtained from the binomial expansion

1 = (p + q)n

= ( n

) pn +

( n

) pn−1 q +

( n

) pn−2 q2 + · · · +

( n

n

) qn .