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PROBABILITY: Combining Two Events. Jonathan Fei. Definitions. RANDOM EXPERIMENT: any procedure or situation that produces a definite outcome that may not be predictable in advance OUTCOME: a single possible result from a random experiment EVENT: Any collection of outcomes
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PROBABILITY: Combining Two Events Jonathan Fei
Definitions RANDOM EXPERIMENT: any procedure or situation that produces a definite outcome that may not be predictable in advance OUTCOME: a single possible result from a random experiment EVENT: Any collection of outcomes Siegel, Andrew F. and Charles J Morgan, Statistics and Data Analysis: An introduction John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1996
Example RANDOM EXPERIMENTS • Flipping a coin 5 times and counting the number of heads OUTCOME • You get 2 Heads and 3 Tails EVENT • Getting more Heads than Tails
OR When one, the other, or both events are true If Dave has a red shirt OR a green hat, then: • He has a red shirt • He has a green hat • He has a red shirt and a green hat
Mutually Exclusive • When two events cannot occur at the same time • Same as disjoint • When you flip a coin, getting heads and getting tails are mutually exclusive. You either get heads or get tails.
AND • When two events are both true If Dave has a red shirt AND a green hat, then: • He has a red shirt and a green hat
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) – P(A and B) P(A and B) = P(A) + P(B) – P(A or B) Formulas If mutually exclusive, P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B)
Conditional Probabilities For P(A given B) or P(A | B): • It is the probability of A if you know the probability of B • P(A | B) = P(A and B) / P(B) Example: In a standard 52 card deck, if you choose two cards and you know the first card was red, it changes the probability that the second card will be black.
Independent Events • Two events are independent if information about one does not affect the other • If something is independent, then: • P(A and B) = P(A) P(B) Example: • If you flip a coin and get heads, it does not affect the chance of getting heads or tails on the next flip. The probability is the same.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS • Mutually Exclusive and Independence are NOT the same thing • Something mutually exclusive cannot be independent
Example For example, the events A = being a senior in high school and B = being a freshman are mutually exclusive, since if I know that someone is a senior, they cannot be a freshman. In order for these two events to be independent, knowing that someone is a senior would have to not give me any information about whether a student is a freshman or not, which is obviously not the case. Todd Frost Flintridge Preparatory School