Solved – Probability Generating Function of Poisson Distribution

poisson distributionprobability

I was just wondering if someone could help me understand this derivation of the probability generating function for a Poisson distribution, (I understand it, until the last step):

$$\pi(s)=\sum^{\infty}_{i=0}e^{-\lambda}\frac{\lambda^i}{i!}s^i$$
$$\pi(s)=e^{-\lambda}\sum^{\infty}_{i=0}\frac{e^{\lambda s}}{e^{\lambda s}}\frac{(\lambda s)^i}{i!}$$
$$= e^{-\lambda}e^{\lambda s} $$

This is a re-production from some lecture notes, but I'm not sure how it jumps from the 2nd last step to the last step?

If someone can show me the intermediate steps I would be very grateful!!

Best Answer

The last step simply uses the fact that for each real number $t$, $$\exp(t)=\sum_{i=0}^\infty\frac{t^i}{i!}.$$ Here $t=\lambda s$. (the introduction of $\frac{e^{\lambda s}}{e^{\lambda s}}$ does not seem to be of use here)