6: Probability
- Page ID
- 113166
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The probability of a specified event is the chance or likelihood that it will occur. There are several ways of viewing probability. One would be experimental in nature, where we repeatedly conduct an experiment. Another view would be subjective in nature, in other words an educated guess.
In this course we will mostly be concerned with theoretical probability, which is defined as follows: Suppose there is a situation with \(n\) equally likely possible outcomes and that \(m\) of those \(n\) outcomes correspond to a particular event; then the probability of that event is defined as \(\dfrac{m}{n}\).
- 6.1: Basic Probability Concepts
- If you roll a die, pick a card from deck of playing cards, or randomly select a person and observe their hair color, we are executing an experiment or procedure. In probability, we look at the likelihood of different outcomes.
- 6.3: Independent Events and Conditional Probabilities
- What do you think the probability is that a man is over six feet tall? If you knew that both his parents were tall would you change your estimate of the probability? A conditional probability is a probability that is based on some prior knowledge.
- 6.4: Counting Methods
- So far the problems we have looked at had rather small total number of outcomes. We could easily count the number of elements in the sample space. If there are a large number of elements in the sample space we can use counting techniques such as permutations or combinations to count them.