Basic definitions
One of the most basic concepts of probability is the concept of a procedure. A procedure is an act that leads to a result, for example, throwing a die or visiting a website.
An event is a collection of the outcomes of a procedure, such as getting heads on a coin flip or leaving a website after only four seconds. A simple event is an outcome/event of a procedure that cannot be broken down further. For example, rolling two dice can be broken down into two simple events: rolling die 1 and rolling die 2.
The sample space of a procedure is the set of all possible simple events. For example, an experiment is performed in which a coin is flipped three times in succession. What is the size of the sample space for this experiment?
The answer is eight because the results could be any one of the possibilities in the following sample space: {HHH, HHT, HTT, HTH, TTT, TTH, THH, or THT}.
What do we mean by “probability”?
The probability of an event represents...
