1. Probability

1. Mr Barton’s Favourite! I’ll come clean straight away… probability is my favourite maths topic. Sad, hey? I’m not too good at drawing shapes or using a compass, but I’m pretty good at Probability, and I like it, and hopefully after reading this section, you will too! • What is Probability?… • Probability is the likelihood or chance of something happening. • And that something can be pretty much anything – from something boring like getting a head when you toss a coin, to something much more interesting, like the probability of a £300million space rocket returning safely from it’s mission. • We use probabilities every single day in the decisions we make without even knowing it. • The tools I am going to arm you with in this section will hopefully enable you to understand and enjoy probability through to A Level and beyond…. that’s the plan, anyway. 1. Probability The Lingo you need: Experiment – now, this doesn’t necessarily mean rats and men in lab coats, it just means something is happening, and someone else is observing what happens Outcomes – these are all the different things that could happen in a probability experiment. One question you must always ask yourself is: “is every outcome equally likely to happen?” Event – this just means the particular outcome or outcomes we are interested in

2. The most important maths formula you will ever learn… Here it comes… P (event) = the number of ways the event could happen the total number of possible equally likely outcomes What each bit means: P (event) – this is just a quick way of writing: “the probability of an event happening”. e.g. P (rain on Wednesday) means “the probability it will rain on Wednesday” The number of ways the event could happen – you have to carefully count up all the different ways there are of the event you are interested in actually occurring The total number of possible equally likely outcomes – this is the hardest and most important bit. You must carefully count up all the total possible things that could happen, but you must remember that they must all be equally likely! And when you get your answer using the formula, it will be a fraction, and you should simplify it you can! And everything you need to know about probability comes from this formula! Now, we will discover all the important probability concepts, using a few examples…

3. Big Example 1 Imagine, for some reason, someone has put each of the 26 letters of the alphabet on identical tiles and chucked them in a bag. This person then decides it would be fun to get you to close your eyes and pick tiles out of this bag. You are not so sure, but you decide to give it a go as it will be a good way of learning about probability. Question 1:What is the probability of picking out a vowel? Well, let’s use our formula: The number of vowels in the bag: a, e, i, o, u Quick way of writing: ”the probability of picking a vowel” The number of equally likely things that could happen: we could have picked any of the 26 identical tiles! Question 2:What is the probability of picking out a letter? The answer might be obvious, but let’s see why: There are 26 letters in the bag, and any will do for us! Quick way of writing: ”the probability of picking o letter” There are 26 equally likely outcomes Rule 1: If something has a probability of 1, it is CERTAIN to happen

4. Question 3:What is the probability of picking out a number? Again, it’s easy, but look why it works! There is nothing in the bag we are interested in as there are no numbers! Quick way of writing: ”the probability of picking a vowel” The number of equally likely things that could happen: we could have picked any of the 26 identical tiles! Rule 2: If something has a probability of 0, it is IMPOSSIBLE Rule 3: All probabilities lie between 0 and 1, so if you find yourself with a negative answer, or something like 2.4, then you have done something wrong!!! Question 4:What is the probability of picking the letter A, given that your friend tells you the tile in your hand is a vowel? Now, believe it or not, this question is bordering on being A Level, but our good old formula still works! There is only one letter A Quick way of writing: ”the probability of picking A” Seeing as our friend has told us that our tile is a vowel, there are 5 equally likely possibilities

5. Big Example 2 Mr Barton is wondering what his Mum will have cooked him for tea. Going off past experience, the probability of it being beans on toast is 0.6, sausage and mash is 0.25, steak and chips is 0.1, and no food at all is 0.05 Question 1:What is the probability Mr Barton has beans on toast or sausage and mash ? Now there is a key word in that question and it is OR. This means that Mr Barton can have either beans on toast or sausage and mash, it does not matter which occurs. So what do you think we need to do with the probabilities?: Now, events like this have a posh name – MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. All that means is that both events cannot occur at the same time – Mr Barton can’t have both beans on toast and sausage and mash for tea… unless he is really hungry. Rule 4: To find the probability of something happening OR something else happening, just add up your probabilities Question 2:What is the probability Mr Barton actually gets his tea made? Now one way to do this is to add up all the possible food outcomes… but there is a quicker way: There is only one outcome that results in no food, and the probability of any of the four outcomes occurring is 1 as it is certain that something will occur so:

6. Question 3:What is the probability Mr Barton has beans on toast one night and the next? Now, to answer this question, we must first make an assumption: what Mr Barton has for tea one night and the next night are INDEPENDENT of each other – in other words, the choice of last night’s tea does not affect tonight’s choice. Now, that may seem pretty unrealistic, but you will tend to find that a lot of probability questions ask you to assume that two events are independent of each other. Now, again there is a very important word in the question that helps you spot this type – AND. To work out the probability of something happening and something else happening you do not add up the probabilities, as in this case you would get an answer bigger than 1, which is rubbish, so you do this… Rule 5: To find the probability of something happening AND something else happening, just multiply your probabilities together! Classic Mistakes The most common mistake pupils make with probability question is they mix up Mutually Exclusive and Independent events, and end up multiplying when they should be adding! Learn to look for key words in questions: Mutually Exclusive Key Words: Or, Either Independent Key Words:And, Both, Together

7. What do you make of this argument… If you toss two coins together, the probability of getting one head and one tail is: because… One way you can get a head and a tail Three equally likely outcomes: head-head, head-tail, or tail-tail Sounds convincing, doesn’t it?... Until you think about it and realise it’s absolute rubbish! 1. There is not just “one way you can get a head and a tail”… there are two: head-tail and tail-head! 2. The three outcomes might be “equally likely”, but there’s one missing… tail-head! So where did we go wrong?... Well, when you have two experiments happening at the same time (like our two coins here), the safest way to ensure you account of all the outcomes is to knock up a SAMPLE SPACE DIAGRAM… Coin 1 So, we can now clearly see that there are 4 equally likely outcomes, and so get our probabilities, we just need to count up the number of outcomes we are interested in: Coin 2

8. Big Example 3 I am feeling pretty bored so I decide to roll a pair of dice and each time subtract the highest score from the lowest Question 1:Draw a sample space diagram to show all the equally likely outcomes. Classic opportunity to use a sample space diagram – two experiments, each with lots of equally likely outcomes. Okay, so the outcomes from each dice go across the top and up the side, and the numbers in the middle come from subtracting the smallest number from the biggest. Dice 1 Question 2:What is the probability of getting a score of 0? 36 equally likely outcomes, how many are 0?... Dice 2 Question 3:If you rolled the two dice 180 times, how many times would you expect to get a score of 1? This is where we can use probabilities to help us predict results. There are 36 equally likely outcomes, and 10 of them give us a score of 1. So, if we rolled the dice 36 times, we’d expect to get a score of 1 on 10 occasions So, What about if we rolled them 180 times?... 50 times! x 5 x 5