probability mass function

In statistics and probability, the probability mass function, abbreviated pmf, is a function that maps a discrete random variable to its probability. By convention, probability functions are denoted by lower case letters, often f. The pmf f for random variable X would be .

If X is a discrete random variable in a sample space S, then the probability mass function is defined as:

Like any probability function, the output of the pmf is between 0 and 1 inclusive, and the sum of the probability mass function’s image, ie., the probability of the sample space, is 1.