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The term law of total probability is sometimes taken to mean the law of alternatives, which is a special case of the law of total probability applying to discrete random variables. [ citation needed ] One author uses the terminology of the "Rule of Average Conditional Probabilities", [ 4 ] while another refers to it as the "continuous law of ...
The proposition in probability theory known as the law of total expectation, [1] the law of iterated expectations [2] (LIE), Adam's law, [3] the tower rule, [4] and the smoothing theorem, [5] among other names, states that if is a random variable whose expected value is defined, and is any random variable on the same probability space, then
In the latter two examples the law of total probability is irrelevant, since only a single event (the condition) is given. By contrast, in the example above the law of total probability applies, since the event X = 0.5 is included into a family of events X = x where x runs over (−1,1), and these events are a partition of the probability space.
The certainty that is adopted can be described in terms of a numerical measure, and this number, between 0 and 1 (where 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates certainty) is called the probability. Probability theory is used extensively in statistics , mathematics , science and philosophy to draw conclusions about the likelihood of potential ...
The probability generating function is an example of a generating function of a sequence: see also formal power series. It is equivalent to, and sometimes called, the z-transform of the probability mass function.
The probability distribution of the sum of two or more independent random variables is the convolution of their individual distributions. The term is motivated by the fact that the probability mass function or probability density function of a sum of independent random variables is the convolution of their corresponding probability mass functions or probability density functions respectively.
Cumulative distribution function for the exponential distribution Cumulative distribution function for the normal distribution. In probability theory and statistics, the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a real-valued random variable, or just distribution function of , evaluated at , is the probability that will take a value less than or equal to .
The fact that the likelihood function can be defined in a way that includes contributions that are not commensurate (the density and the probability mass) arises from the way in which the likelihood function is defined up to a constant of proportionality, where this "constant" can change with the observation , but not with the parameter .