Similarly, the expected value of the geometrically distributed random variable Y is (1 − p)/p, and its variance is (1 − p)/p2:
Let μ = (1 − p)/p be the expected value of Y. Then the cumulants of the probability distribution of Y satisfy the recursion
Outline of proof: That the expected value is (1 − p)/p can be shown in the following way. Let Y be as above. Then
(The interchange of summation and differentiation is justified by the fact that convergent power seriesconverge uniformly on compact subsets of the set of points where they converge.)
The geometric distribution Y is a special case of the negative binomial distribution, with r = 1. More generally, if Y1, ..., Yr are independent geometrically distributed variables with parameter p, then the sum
follows a negative binomial distribution with parameters r and '1-'p.
If Y1, ..., Yr are independent geometrically distributed variables (with possibly different success parameters pm), then their minimum
is also geometrically distributed, with parameter
Suppose 0 < r < 1, and for k = 1, 2, 3, ... the random variable Xk has a Poisson distribution with expected value rk/k. Then
has a geometric distribution taking values in the set {0, 1, 2, ...}, with expected value r/(1 − r).
The exponential distribution is the continuous analogue of the geometric distribution. If X is an exponentially distributed random variable with parameter λ, then
where is the floor (or greatest integer) function, is a geometrically distributed random variable with parameter p = 1 − e−λ (thus λ = −ln(1 − p)[1]) and taking values in the set {0, 1, 2, ...}. This can be used to generate geometrically distributed pseudorandom numbers by first generating exponentially distributed pseudorandom numbers from a uniform pseudorandom number generator: then is geometrically distributed with parameter , if is uniformly distributed in [0,1].