Sree Narayanaguru Institute of

Management Studies

Faculty Name: Dr. G. Bhuvaneswari, Professor

Course Name: Quantitative Methods for Management

Unit 3 : Topic: Probability

 Marginal Probability

Marginal probability is the probability of a single event without consideration

of any other event. It is also called simple probability.

A group consists of 200 peoples, out of these 120 are males and 80 are females. What is
the probability that a male is selected?
Solution:

The probability that a male will be selected is obtained by dividing the total of the
male by the total people
 Addition Theory of Probability
This is used to calculate the probability of the union of events. The union of events A
and B is the collection of all outcomes that belongs either event A or event B or to
both A and B
This states that if two events A and B are mutually exclusive, the probability of
occurrence A or B is the sum of the individual probability of A and B. Symbolically,
 Addition Theory of Probability- Exercise
Problem
City residents were surveyed recently to determine the relationship of
news paper available. 50% of the residents read the morning paper, 60%
read the evening paper, and 20% read both the newspapers. Find the
probability that a resident selected reads either morning or evening or
both the papers.
Solution:
Let A be a event represents reading morning newspaper
Let B be a event represents reading evening newspaper
P(A) = 0.50
P(B) = 0.60
=0.20
The probability that a resident reads the morning or
evening or both the papers

= 0.50 +0.60 – 0.20 = 0.90

Conditional Probability
The multiplication theorem cannot applicable if the events are dependent. The
probability attached to such an event is called the conditional probability, and is
denoted by P(A/B) i.e., probability of A, given that ‘B’ has occurred. It is
defined as;

If two events ‘A’ and ‘B’ are dependent, then conditional probability of ‘B’
given ‘A’ is
 A study showed that 65 percent of managers had some business education and
50 percent had some engineering education, furthermore, 20 percent of the
managers had some business education but no engineering education. What is
the probability that a manager has some business education, given that he has
some engineering education?
Solution:
Let A be the event denote the manager had some business education
Let B be the event denote the manager had some engineering education

P(A) = 0.65
P(B) = 0.50
P(A  B) = 0.65-0.20 = 0.45

Probability that a manager has business education given that he had some
engineering education

= 0.45/0.50 = 0.90
 Multiplication Theorem of Probability

Multiplication is used to find the probability of two or more events

happening together.

A. Multiplication Rule to Find Joint probability

The probability of the intersection of two events is called joint probability.

It is written as P(A and B). It is also written as P(A  B)

P(A  B)
 The following table gives the classification of all legislative members by gender and
Law graduate

If one of the MLA is selected random, what is the probability that this
member is male and Law Graduate?
Solution:
We calculate the probability of intersection of two events, M and L
 Multiplication Theorem of Probability

B. Multiplication Rule to Find Probability of Independent

Events
If two events A and B are independent, the probability
that they both will occur is equal to the product of their
individual probabilities. Symbolically,
It is written as P(A and B). It is also written as P(A  B)

P(A  B)  P(A)P(B)
A fair coin is tossed four times. What is the probability that all the four
tosses are tail?
Solution: