Conditional Probability

To introduce the notion of conditional probability, let us first examine the following question: Suppose
that all of the freshmen took calculus and discrete math last semester. Suppose that 70% of the students
passed calculus, 55% passed discrete math, and 45% passed both. If a randomly selected freshman is
found to have passed calculus last semester, what is the probability that he or she also passed discrete
math last semester?

To answer this question, let A and B be the events that the randomly selected freshman passed
discrete math and calculus last semester, respectively. Note that the quantity we are asked to nd is
not P (A), which is 0.55; it would have been if we were not aware that B has occurred. Knowing
that B has occurred changes the chances of the occurrence of A. To nd the desired probability,
denoted by the symbol P(A | B) [read: probability of A given B] and called the conditional
probability of A given B, let n be the number of all the freshmen. Then (0.7)n is the number of
freshmen who passed calculus, and (0.45)n is the number of those who passed both calculus and
discrete math. Therefore, of the (0.7)n freshmen who passed calculus, (0.45)n of them passed
discrete math as well. It is given that the randomly selected student is one of the (0.7)n who passed
calculus; we also want to nd the probability that he or she is one of the (0.45)n who passed discrete
math. This is obviously equal to (0.45)n/(0.7)n = 0.45/0.7.
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As another example, suppose that a bus arrives at a station every day at a random time
between 1:00 P.M. and 1:30 P.M. Suppose that at 1:10 the bus has not arrived and we want
to calculate the probability that it will arrive in not more than 10 minutes from now. Let A be
the event that the bus will arrive between 1:10 and 1:20 and B be the event that it will arrive
between 1:10 and 1:30. Then the desired probability is юю

 Lottery Ticket.

Example 2.1.1.
Consider a state lottery game in which six numbers are drawn without replacement from a bin
containing the numbers 1–30. Each player tries to match the set of six numbers that will be
drawn without regard to the order in which the numbers are drawn. Suppose that you hold a
ticket in such a lottery with the numbers 1, 14, 15, 20, 23, and 27. You turn on your television
to watch the drawing but all you see is one number, 15, being drawn when the power suddenly
goes off in your house. You don’t even know whether 15 was the first, last, or some in-between
draw. However, now that you know that 15 appears in the winning draw, the probability that
your ticket is a winner must be higher than it was before you saw the draw. How do you
calculate the revised probability?

According to the
frequency interpretation, if an experimental process is repeated a large number of
times, then the proportion of repetitions in which the event B will occur is
approximately Pr(B) and the proportion of repetitions in which both the event A and
the event B will occur is approximately Pr(A ∩ B). Therefore, among those
repetitions in which the event B occurs, the proportion of repetitions in which the
event A will also occur is approximately equal to

Pr(A) = 6/36 and Pr(B) = (6/36) + (5/36) = 11/36. Hence, p = 6/11.

Theorem of multiplications of probabilities

Thank you for your attention !