PROBABILITY
STATISTICS
By: Liza D. Buitizon
INTRODUCTION
Formal study of chance.
It originated from the analysis of gambling games (or
games of chance) – predicting the likelihood/chance of an
outcome.
It is important in the study of statistics as it provides a
bridge between descriptive and inferential statistics.
REAL LIFE APPLICATIONS
Determining the probability of winning in lotto.
Determining the chance of dengue infection in a
community with reported cases.
Determining the chance of the price of a particular stock
increasing in a particular trading day
Determining the strength and path of typhoons
APPROACHES IN ASSIGNING
PROBABILITIES TO EVENTS
In general, a probability is a number attached to
an event which indicates the chance it will occur.
The larger the number, the more likely it is to
occur.
Approaches:
A Priori
A Posteriori
Subjective
A PRIORI APPROACH
Theoretical, axiomatic, classical
Requires the construction of a model that will be used
in the computation or assignment of probabilities with
underlying assumptions.
A PRIORI APPROACH
MODEL: Sample Space
ASSUMPTION: Each outcome in S has the same
chance of occurring (equally likely outcomes)
Under this assumption, the probability of an event
E occurring is
Number of outcomes/elements in E
P( E )
Number of outcomes/elements in S
Involves counting.
A PRIORI APPROACH
Example:
Recall the experiment of tossing 3 fair coins
Since the coins are fair, outcomes are equally likely.
S {HHH , HHT , HTH , THH , HTT , THT , TTH , TTT }
Let E= be the event that two heads will occur
E {HHT , HTH , THH }
P(E) = 3/8
A POSTERIORI APPROACH
Also called the relative frequency approach
The probability of an event occurring is computed based
on the relative frequency of that event happening after
the random experiment is conducted a large number of
times.
A POSTERIORI APPROACH
Example: Random exp’t. – toss three coins.
Suppose, the experiment is conducted 100 times
and the result are shown in the following table:
OUTCOME HHH HHT HTH THH HTT THT TTH TTT
FREQUENCY 11 9 13 15 12 18 17 5
Let E be the event of getting 2 heads:
E {HHT , HTH , THH }
9 13 15 37
P( E ) 0.37
100 100
A POSTERIORI APPROACH
f ( A)
lim P ( A)
n n
The A posteriori probability is not always
equal to the A priori probability.
However, the two probabilities becomes
closer as the number of trials is
increases.
SUBJECTIVE APPROACH
The assignment of a probability depends on
one’s personal assessment.
PROBABILITY DEFINITION
Probability is the chance that something will happen.
Probabilities are expressed mathematically as fractions
(1/6, 1/3, 8/9) or as decimals (.25, .5, .78) between 0 and
1.
Assigning zero means that something can never happen;
and a probability of 1 indicates that something will surely
happen.
0 PA 1 for any event A
P 1 where is the sample space
P 0
EXAMPLES:
If a card is drawn from an ordinary deck, find the
probability that it is a heart.
A bag contains 6 red balls, 5 yellow balls and 3 green
balls. A ball is drawn at random. What is the
probability that the ball is: (a) green, (b) not yellow?
The letters of the word ENGINEERING are written on
slips of paper, and are placed in a box. A slip of paper
is chosen at random. What is the probability that: (a)
the letter is vowel, (b) the letter is a consonant.
EXAMPLE:
A pilot plant has produced metallurgical batches which are summarized
as follows:
Low Strength High Strength
Low in 2 27
impurities
High in 12 4
impurities
If these results are representative of full-scale production, find estimated
probabilities that a production batch will be:
i) low in impurities
ii) high strength
iii) both high in impurities and high strength
iv) both high in impurities and low strength
PROBABILITY OF A COMPLEMENT
This rule states that the probability that an event
A will not occur is equal to 1 minus the probability
that it will occur.
PA' 1 PA