- [Yoav] Hi, my name is Yoav Fruend,

and this is Introduction to Probability and Statistics.

This is the first video,

therefore it is the introduction

to Introduction to Probability and Statistics.

So we're going to talk about probability.

That is, roughly speaking, about tossing dice.

And we're going to talk about statistics,

which is, roughly speaking,

about keeping scores in baseball.

So why should you care about probability and statistics?

Basically, it's because this is a very powerful tool

for dealing with uncertainty.

So consider the example here,

that we have Google trying to give us a good route

from the point A to the point B.

There are two routes that are shown here.

One is the shortest route,

and the other is the fastest route.

So if we think about shortest route from A to B,

that is a certainty.

Once we know how the roads are constructed

that is a certain thing.

On the other hand,

in terms of the fastest route from A to B,

that depends on traffic, on other conditions,

and that really is something

that we have a lot of uncertainty about.

Therefore, we need statistics

to help us deal with that uncertainty.

Here's another example.

Search Engines.

Suppose you have a search engine

and you're looking for some information.

The first kind of query that you can make

that is a certainty query,

is to find all the web pages

that contain the words Trump, or Hillary, and debate. Okay?

So that is basically a very specific condition

and you can ask your search engine

to look for all of those pages.

On the other hand, it might be more relevant

to ask for the ten most relevant pages for the query

"Trump and Hillary debate." Okay?

So that is not a query

that has a specific set of well defined answers.

It has to do with what words appear in those kind of things

and with what pages are really most relevant,

most up to date,

various things with which we have uncertainty.

The last example is about an insurance company.

So with an insurance company,

you have a contract,

and it says with certainty,

that if you have life insurance

with this company and you die,

then the insurance company has to pay your family

some prescribed amount of dollars.

So that's a certainty.

On the other hand,

the insurance company itself

has to deal with a lot of uncertainty.

It doesn't know which people are going to die.

So it has to figure out,

what is the minimum life insurance premium

such that the probability

that life insurance company

will go bankrupt in 10 years

is smaller than 1%.

Probably much, much smaller than that.

In any case, what the company needs to somehow deal with,

is the uncertainty of how many people will die

that have insurance,

and how much they will have to pay them. Okay?

So that's a case we need to deal with uncertainty.

So what are you going to learn in this course?

First of all,

navigation and search engine that I showed you,

those are very advanced problems,

as is the life insurance market.

What you will learn here are the foundations

that these kind of methods are based on.

So you'll solve basic problems

of reasoning under uncertainty.

So as an example,

you will know how to answer a question of the type;

If you flip a coin 100 times,

what is the probability of getting at most 10 heads?

Or, what is the probability

of getting a four of kind hand in poker?

These are questions that you would be able to answer.

And if you're interested in computer science examples,

here are some other questions you might be able to answer

which is, suppose you have a hash table

with a million elements,

and you don't want to allow more than five indirections

at most for 10 elements,

so how big does the table need to be?

That's a calculation that you will be able to do.

A similar one is,

suppose that you have a router

and that the router fails from time to time.

And the rates of failure is once a year.

So that gives you some information,

but you would want to know,

specifically let's say,

what's the probability that it will fail

during the first month?

Given that on average it fails once per year.

So that's a question that you'll be able to answer.

So it's not universal, the belief in statistics.

Here is an example from a basketball coach

who does not believe in statistics

because there are too many other factors and so on.

So there are many people

that basically don't want to trust statistics.

And that is fine.

But on the other hand,

you can say many other people

dealing with the same domain, here, basketball,

do trust statistics.

So this is an app for fans of basketball

to have statistics about different players

and so they can do fantasy basketball

and win a lot of money.

So to summarize,

what we have all around us

when we are doing anything in the world,

is uncertainty.

And probability and statistics provide a rational way

to deal with uncertainty.

So what we're going to discuss next is,

what is probability, and then what is statistics.

So I'll see you then.