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Probability and statistics. Probability and statistics are two closely related fields in mathematics, sometimes combined for academic purposes. They are covered in several articles: Probability. Statistics. Glossary of probability and statistics. Notation in probability and statistics. Timeline of probability and statistics.
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an event is to occur. [ note 1 ][ 1 ][ 2 ] A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin.
Statistics (from German: Statistik, orig. "description of a state, a country") [1][2] is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. [3][4][5] In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a ...
Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set of axioms. Typically these axioms formalise probability in terms of a ...
t. e. In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of possible outcomes for an experiment. [1][2] It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events (subsets of the sample space). [3]
The mathematical sense of the term is from 1718. In the 18th century, the term chance was also used in the mathematical sense of "probability" (and probability theory was called Doctrine of Chances). This word is ultimately from Latin cadentia, i.e. "a fall, case". The English adjective likely is of Germanic origin, most likely from Old Norse ...
A subset of the sample space of a procedure or experiment (i.e. a possible outcome) to which a probability can be assigned. For example, on rolling a die, "getting a three" is an event (with a probability of 1⁄6 if the die is fair), as is "getting a five or a six" (with a probability of 1⁄3).
Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure theory. [1][2]