Previously, I’ve written about how to use Minitab to identify the distribution of your continuous data. That post prompted several questions about how to use and identify discrete distributions. If you are a quality improvement analyst who works with counts of defects or pass/fail inspections, you may be particularly interested in these.

In this column, I’ll show you how to use discrete distributions in Minitab statistical software. My next column will show you how to determine whether your data follow a specific discrete distribution.

Continuous vs. discrete distributions

If a variable can take on any value between two specified values, it is a continuous variable, and the values follow a continuous distribution. However, if the value can only take on a finite number of values, the values follow a discrete distribution.

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