Probability
By Samuel Albert Cheshire
What is probability?
Probability is the likelyhood of an event occuring in the future.
Something that can't happen is impossible and has a
probability of 0. Something that will definatly happen is
certain and has a probability of 1.
Below is a probability scale.
Impossible Evens Certain
0 0.5 1
The probability of the event A can be written as P(A).
Events and Outcomes
The act of throwing a dice or picking a number at random in a
trial. All the numbers that could be picked are possible
outcomes. A succesful outcome is an event (like throwing a
six). An event can be a set of one our more succesful
outcomes.
If all the outcomes are equally likely then the probability of an
event is the number of succesful outcomes divided by the
total number of outcomes.
Using probability to asses risk
To calculate the risk of an area flooding in a year you would
use: number of flooded years divided by the number of
years. So if in the last 50 years it has flooded twice then you
would use 2 ÷ 50 = 0.04.
And if it costs £1200 to fix a flooded house; then the yearly
flood insurance would be: £1200 × 0.04 = £48.
Sample space
A sample space is a list of all possible outcomes of a trial. If there
are two events, then a table could be used as a sample space.
Below is a sample space for a die and coin.
Roll 1 Roll 2 Roll 3 Roll 4 Roll 5 Roll 6
Heads (H) H, 1 H, 2 H, 3 H, 4 H, 5 H, 6
Tails (T) T, 1 T, 2 T, 3 T, 4 T, 5 T, 6
Since there is an equal probability of each outcome, and there are
12 outcomes, then the probability of any individual out come
(e.g. H,6) is 1/12. So the probabilty of an even and a head could
be worked out similarly. There are 3 outcomes that match that
criteria and twelve overall so the probability would be 3/12 = 1/4.
Venn diagrams
A Venn diagram is a way to represent sample space in a
diagram. It can also be used to calculate probabilities.
Here is a diagram showing the probability of newspapers A and
B featuring featuring a particular story on their front pages.
The A
chance B
of newspaper A having the story is 0.8
and newspaper B is 0.2. The chance that neither have the
0.8 – x x 0.2 - x
story is 0.1.
Since all the probabilities must add up to 1 then the chance of
both newspapers having the story0.1(x) could be worked out as:
(0.8 – x) + (0.2 – x) + x + 0.1 = 1
1.1 – x = 1
x = 0.1
Mutually exclusive and exhaustive
• Outcomes that cannot occur simultaneously are said to
be mutually exclusive.
• The probability of one mutually exclusive event OR
another happening is P(A) + P(B).
• A set of outcomes is exhaustive if it contains all
possible outcomes.
• For example a random integer will either be odd or
even.
Independent events
• Events are independent if they can both occur
simultaneously and do not effect each other
• For example a man could decide to buy a paper, but
also decide to buy a snack from a shop. He does not
need to buy either or both.
• The probability of one independent event AND another
happening is P(A) × P(B)
Tree diagrams
• A tree diagram can be used to help calculate probabilities
• For example if there are 4 red and 3 green balls in a bag and one is taken at
random then replaced, then another is taken at random and replaced then
you could use a tree diagram to work out the chance of different colours
being picked: Second ball G
First ball 3/7 3/7 × 3/7 = 9/49
G
R
3/7
4/7 3/7 × 4/7 = 12/49
G
R 3/7 3/7 × 4/7 = 12/49
R
4/7
4/7 4/7 × 4/7 = 16/49
Conditional probabilty
• Events are independent if they can both occur
simultaneously and do not effect each other
• For example a man could decide to buy a paper, but
also decide to buy a snack from a shop. He does not
need to buy either or both.
• The probability of one independent event AND another
happening is P(A) × P(B)