Identifying distribution for type of data

[Little_Louis]

I sat an online test at work, and there were a few questions I couldn't answer. Here is one of them...

Question: Leaks in an underground water pipe are known to occur randomly over its 10km length. Which of the following is the distribution of the distance of a newly discovered leak from the start of the water pipe?

Choose one of the following options (my comments are in bold):

1. Continuous uniform - random outcome that lies between certain bounds
2. Normal - number of data points clustering around an average
3. Exponential - time to event, at a constant average rate (usually failure rate, expected time for event to occur)
4. Poisson - Number of events occurring in a fixed interval (distance/time/space)

I'm trying to work out which distribution it could be. First of all from the question, I can see it's about distance, it's bounded by 0 and 10km. Each event is independent. So I think this is a continuous uniform - any leak can spring up randomly at any point over the 10km distance. I can't decide from the question whether we just get one leak in one place at random. Thank you for your help in advance

 

[BigBeachBanana]

I sat an online test at work, and there were a few questions I couldn't answer. Here is one of them...

Question: Leaks in an underground water pipe are known to occur randomly over its 10km length. Which of the following is the distribution of the distance of a newly discovered leak from the start of the water pipe?

Choose one of the following options (my comments are in bold):

1. Continuous uniform - random outcome that lies between certain bounds
2. Normal - number of data points clustering around an average
3. Exponential - time to event, at a constant average rate (usually failure rate, expected time for event to occur)
4. Poisson - Number of events occurring in a fixed interval (distance/time/space)

I'm trying to work out which distribution it could be. First of all from the question, I can see it's about distance, it's bounded by 0 and 10km. Each event is independent. So I think this is a continuous uniform - any leak can spring up randomly at any point over the 10km distance. I can't decide from the question whether we just get one leak in one place at random. Thank you for your help in advance

We're trying to model distance here, so it does not have anything to do with occurrence so Poisson and Exponential are out. I think the question is poorly written, but I think you're supposed to assume there's only 1 leak. I agree with your choice, continuous uniform.

 

[Little_Louis]

We're trying to model distance here, so it does not have anything to do with occurrence so Poisson and Exponential are out. I think the question is poorly written, but I think you're supposed to assume there's only 1 leak. I agree with your choice, continuous uniform.

@BigBeachBanana thank you for your reply, most helpful.