For the Major League Baseball seasons from 1950 through 2008, there were fifty-nine nine-inning games in which one of the teams did not manage to get a hit. The data in the table give the number of no-hitters per season over this period. Assume that the data follow a Poisson distribution,

p_X(k; λ) = e^−λ λ^k/k! , k = 0, 1, 2, . . .

(a) Estimate λ and compare the observed and expected frequencies.

(b) Does the agreement (or lack of agreement) in part (a) come as a surprise? Explain.

No. of No-Hitters                               Frequency

0………………………………           6

1………………………………          19

2………………………………          12

3………………………………          13

4+……………………………..           9