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In probability theory, an event is a subset of outcomes of an experiment (a subset of the sample space) to which a probability is assigned. [1] 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]
In probability theory, the chain rule [1] (also called the general product rule [2] [3]) describes how to calculate the probability of the intersection of, not necessarily independent, events or the joint distribution of random variables respectively, using conditional probabilities.
Note that for any event with return period , the probability of exceedance within an interval equal to the return period (i.e. =) is independent from the return period and it is equal to %. This means, for example, that there is a 63.2% probability of a flood larger than the 50-year return flood to occur within any period of 50 year.
Given two events A and B from the sigma-field of a probability space, with the unconditional probability of B being greater than zero (i.e., P(B) > 0), the conditional probability of A given B (()) is the probability of A occurring if B has or is assumed to have happened. [5]
A discrete probability distribution is the probability distribution of a random variable that can take on only a countable number of values [15] (almost surely) [16] which means that the probability of any event can be expressed as a (finite or countably infinite) sum: = (=), where is a countable set with () =.
The mutually exclusive event {5} has a probability of 1/6, and the event {1,2,3,4,5,6} has a probability of 1, that is, absolute certainty. When doing calculations using the outcomes of an experiment, it is necessary that all those elementary events have a number assigned to them.
In probability theory, the law (or formula) of total probability is a fundamental rule relating marginal probabilities to conditional probabilities. It expresses the total probability of an outcome which can be realized via several distinct events , hence the name.
Let these events be called Event 2, Event 3, and so on. Event 1 is the event of person 1 having a birthday, which occurs with probability 1. This conjunction of events may be computed using conditional probability: the probability of Event 2 is 364 / 365 , as person 2 may have