PROBABILITY OF

RANDOM VARIABLES
 After this lesson, you should be able to:

• Illustrate the properties of discrete random variables.

• Compute probabilities corresponding to a discrete
random variable
• Illustrate the probability mass function of a
continuous variable.
Properties of Discrete Random Variables

Outcome of an Experiment Probability of each outcome

P(X= x)
The sum of the probabilities of a discrete random variable is always equal to 1.
This property is shown in the next illustrative example.
X 1 3 4 5 10

P(X) 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.15 0.25

 Check your progress
• Given the discrete probability distribution of a certain experiment, answer
the following questions:
• 1.What is the range of the variable X?
• 2.What is P(X ≤ 2) ?
• 3.What is P(3 < X < 6 )?
X 1 3 4 5 10

P(X) 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.15 0.25

 BINOMIAL
DISTRIBUTION