In this computer practical, you will learn how to generate random variables from different distributions. You can use this knowledge to answer all sorts of questions about the probability that an event occurs. We will discuss how to calculate the probability density, cumulative probability and the inverse cumulative density (quantiles). Luckily, R has some standard functions that can help you with these calculations. These functions start with the letters d*, p* and q*, followed by a short name for the distribution you are using. For the normal distribution (sometimes also called Gaussian distribution) this will result in the functions dnorm, pnorm and qnorm and for the binomial distribution we have dbinom, pbinom and qbinom. In R this information (and more) can be found by typing:

?Distributions