Al-Hikma University College

Department of Medical Laboratory

Techniques
2nd Year

Biostatistics
Probability
(Part - 1)

Lecture – 7

Lecture By
Dr. Mahmoud Abbas Mahmoud Al-Naimi
Assistant Professor
mahmoudalnaimi@hiuc.edu.iq
mahmoudalnaimi@gmail.com

2020
 Probability

Introduction

 The concept of probability is frequently encountered in everyday

communication. For example, a physician may say that a patient
has a 50-50 chance of surviving a certain operation. Another
physician may say that she is 95 percent certain that a patient has a
particular disease. A public health nurse may say that nine times
out of ten a certain client will break an appointment.
 Most people express probabilities in terms of percentages. But, it is
more convenient to express probabilities as fractions. Thus, we
may measure the probability of the occurrence of some event by a
number between 0 and 1.
 The more likely the event, the closer the number is to one. An event
that can't occur has a probability of zero, and an event that is
certain to occur has a probability of one.
 Definitions

 Equally likely outcomes: Are the outcomes that have the same chance of
occurring.

 Mutually exclusive: Two events are said to be mutually exclusive if they

cannot occur simultaneously.

 The event (E ): Is a set of outcomes which has a certain characteristic.

 Classical Probability: If an event (E ) can occur in (N ) mutually

exclusive and equally likely ways, and if (m ) of these possess a triat (E ),
the probability of the occurrence of event (E ) is equal to (m/ N ).
If we read P (E ) as “the probability of (E )” we may express this
definition as
P (E ) = m/ N

Note: The probability of an event (E ) , always satisfies 0 ≤ P (E ) ≤ 1

 Example:
In the rolling of the die (six sided die), each of the six sides is equally
likely to be observed. So, the probability that a 4 will be observed is
equal to 1/6

Example:
In the tossing a coin each of the two sides (Head and Tail) is equally
likely to be observed. So, the probability that a Head will be
observed is equal to 1/2
Example:
A container contains 5 red, 2 black, and 3 green balls. If one ball is
drawn randomly from this container what is the probability it will
be black?

Solution:
The total number of the balls in the
container is (5 + 2 + 3) = 10
The total number of the black balls in
the container is 2
So, the probability of drawing a black
ball will be equal to 2/10 = 1/5
 Relative Frequency Probability: If some posses is repeated a large
number of times (n ), and if some resulting event (E ) occurs (m )
times, the relative frequency of occurrence of (E ), (m/n) will be
approximately equal to probability of (E ).

P (E ) = m/n

 Subjective Probability: Probability measures the confidence that a

particular individual has in the truth of a particular proposition. This
concept does not rely on the repeatability of any process. In fact, by
applying this concept of probability, one may evaluate the probability
of an event that can only happen once.

Example: The probability that a cure for cancer will be

discovered within the next 10 years.
Example:
The primary aim of a study by Carter et al. was to investigate the effect of
the age at onset of bipolar disorder on the course of the illness. One of the
variables investigated was family history of mood disorders. Table below
shows the frequency of a family history of mood disorders in the two groups
of interest (Early age at onset defined to be 18 years or younger and Later
age at onset defined to be later than 18 years). Suppose we pick a person at
random from this sample. What is the probability that this person will be 18
years old or younger?
Table: Frequency of Family History of Mood Disorder
by Age Group Among Bipolar Subjects

Family history of Mood Early = 18 Later > 18

Total
Disorders (E) (L)
Negative (A) 28 35 63
Bipolar Disorder (B) 19 38 57
Unipolar (C) 41 44 85
Unipolar and Bipolar (D) 53 60 113
Total 141 177 318

Source: Tasha D. Carter, Emanuela Mundo, Sagar V. Parkh, and James L. Kennedy, “Early Age at Onset as a
Risk Factor for Poor Outcome of Bipolar Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research, 37 (2003), 297–303.
Solution:
For the calculation of probabilities, we consider this group of 318 subjects to
be the largest group for which we have an interest.
For this example, we consider the 318 subjects as a population. We assume
that Early and Later are mutually exclusive categories.
The likelihood of selecting any one person is equal to the likelihood of
selecting any other person.

So, we can define the desired probability as the number of subjects with the
characteristic of interest; (Early) divided by the (Total number of subjects).
We may write the result in probability notation as follows:

P (E ) = Number of Early subjects / Total number of subjects

= 141 / 318 = 0.4434
Dr. Mahmoud Al-Naimi