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For example, when tossing an ordinary coin, one typically assumes that the outcomes "head" and "tail" are equally likely to occur. An implicit assumption that all outcomes are equally likely underpins most randomization tools used in common games of chance (e.g. rolling dice, shuffling cards, spinning tops or wheels, drawing lots, etc.).
However, the conclusion that the sun is equally likely to rise as it is to not rise is only absurd when additional information is known, such as the laws of gravity and the sun's history. Similar applications of the concept are effectively instances of circular reasoning , with "equally likely" events being assigned equal probabilities, which ...
The classical definition of probability works well for situations with only a finite number of equally-likely outcomes. This can be represented mathematically as follows: If a random experiment can result in N mutually exclusive and equally likely outcomes and if N A of these outcomes result in the occurrence of the event A , the probability of ...
Probability is the branch of mathematics and statistics 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. Since the ...
In probability theory and statistics, the discrete uniform distribution is a symmetric probability distribution wherein each of some finite whole number n of outcome values are equally likely to be observed. Thus every one of the n outcome values has equal probability 1/n. Intuitively, a discrete uniform distribution is "a known, finite number ...
For any sample space with equally likely outcomes, each outcome is assigned the probability . [16] However, there are experiments that are not easily described by a sample space of equally likely outcomes—for example, if one were to toss a thumb tack many times and observe whether it landed with its point upward or downward, there is no ...
A single outcome may be an element of many different events, [2] and different events in an experiment are usually not equally likely, since they may include very different groups of outcomes. [3] An event consisting of only a single outcome is called an elementary event or an atomic event; that is, it is a singleton set.
A fair coin is an idealized randomizing device with two states (usually named "heads" and "tails") which are equally likely to occur. It is based on the coin flip used widely in sports and other situations where it is required to give two parties the same chance of winning.