  In this paper, we study the conductance and shot noise in transport through a
multi-site system in a two terminal configuration. The dependence of the
transport on the number of atoms in the atomic wire is investigated using a
tight-binding Hamiltonian and the nonequilibrium Green's function method. In
addition to reproducing the even-odd behavior in the transmission probability
at the Fermi energy or the linear response conductance in the normal-atomic
wire-normal metallic(NAN) junctions, we find the following: (i) The shot noise
is larger in the even-numbered atomic wire than in the odd-numbered wire. (ii)
The Andreev conductance displays the same even-odd parity effects in the
normal-atomic wire-superconducting(NAS) junctions. In general, the conductance
is higher in the odd-numbered atomic wire than in the even-numbered wire. When
the number of sites ($N$) is odd and the atomic wire is mirror symmetric with
respect to the center of the atomic wire, the conductance does not depend on
the details of the hopping matrices in the atomic wire, but is solely
determined by the coupling strength to the two leads. When $N$ is even, the
conductance is sensitive to the values of the hopping matrices.
