Chapter 3: Probability and Data Generation Processes

The field of probability calculation was born in the context of gambling. It was then developed further, assuming a relevant role in the analysis of collective phenomena and becoming an essential feature of statistics and statistical decision theory. Probability calculation is an abstract and highly formalized mathematical discipline, while maintaining relevance to its original and pertinent empirical context. The concept of probability is strongly linked to that of uncertainty. The probability of an event can, in fact, be defined as the quantification of the level of randomness of that event. What is not known or cannot be predicted with an absolute level of certainty is known as being random. In this chapter, we will learn how to distinguish between the different definitions of probabilities and how these can be integrated to obtain useful information in the simulation of real phenomena.

In this chapter, we're going to...