The term "Poisson" often refers to the Poisson distribution, a statistical concept used to model the number of events occurring within a fixed interval of time or space. It is particularly useful for counting occurrences of rare events, such as the number of phone calls received at a call center in an hour. The distribution is characterized by a single parameter, λ (lambda), which represents the average rate of occurrence. In addition to its statistical applications, "Poisson" can also refer to Siméon Denis Poisson, a French mathematician and physicist known for his contributions to probability theory and mechanics. His work laid the foundation for various mathematical concepts, including the Poisson distribution, which is named in his honor.