CHAPTER-14
PROBABILITY
A Theoretical Approach
• If a coin is tossed randomly, it either lands heads or tails.
This is fair and unbiased as there is 50% chance for either
heads or tails
• If we roll a die it is fair. The outcomes are either 1, 2, 3, 4,
5 or 6. Each number has same possibility to show up.
Are all the outcomes equal
There is a box with 7 red balls and 2 green balls.
You are told to pick a ball randomly.
There is a high chance that you pick a red ball
because the number of red balls is more
compared to green balls
Experimental or Empirical Probability
We Can define the empirical probability P(E) of an event as
P(E) = Number of trials in which the event happened / Total Number of trials
• This can be applied to every event associated with an experiment which
can be repeated multiple times.
• This is unreliable in many situations and is very expensive and unfeasible.
Theoretical or Classical Probability
The theoretical probability of an event E is written as P(E) is defined as
P(E) = Number of outcomes favorable to E / Number of all possible outcomes of the experiment
where we assume that the outcomes are equally likely
This was given by Pierre Simon Laplace in 1795.
The Origin
• The Theory originated in 16th century by an Italian physician and mathematician J
Cardan.
• He wrote a book ‘The Book on Games of Chance’.
• This caused many mathematician to know more about probability.
• James Bernoulli, A de Moivre and Pierre Simon Laplace are the mathematicians
who made significant contributions in the probability.
• The greatest theory is the ‘Theorie Analytique des Probabilites’ in 1812 by Laplace.
• Probability is used in biology, economics, genetics, physics, sociology etc in the
recent years
