An Introduction to Probability

Alright young fellers, american idol is almost on so I'll try to finish this before it starts but if I don't..I'm sure I can do both! (:

Slide One
The first thing Mr. K asked us today was, "What is the probability of the sky falling?" (chicken little yay!) Each of us were given about a few minutes to write down our answer and we all shared our answers to each other. *refer to the first slide* Most of us came up with different numbers but some of us had the same answer as others. Most of us just chose a random number, like me, but some of us also took some time to why they choose that number. After this dicussion, he then asked us what the numerator and the denominator represented. The numerator is the number of chances of the sky actually falling while the denominator is the set of all possible outcomes.

Slide Two
The next slide explains the defintion of an inderterminate form. So if we take any number such as 6 and multiply it by one then divide by one your answer would be 6. And if you take the 6 again and multiply it by 1/10 then divide by 1/10, you still get the answer 6. Continuing the pattern, you'd eventually reach zero. So you would multiply 6 by zero then divide by zero. Therfore it is in an inderterminate form. If you recall on slide one, 0/0 and 0/∞ are examples of indeterminates as well as ∞/∞ and ∞/0. 1/0 is not in an indeterminate form, it is however, an undefined value.

Slide Three
The next slide includes various vocabulary words which we should know for this unit as well as different examples to explain the meaning of each words.

Slide Four
Calculating the Probability of Event A
This slide includes the formula P(A) = n(A)/n
P(A) - Denotes the probablity of A
n(A) - number of favourable outcomes (number of accourences of A)
n - sample space (the total number of possible outcomes
Probability can not only be expressed as a fraction but also as a ratio, decimal and a percent. However we will not be looking at it as a ratio in this unit.
IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER: Probability of any event is always a number between 0 or 1. This means that if your answer is bigger than one or it is a negative, then your answer must be wrong.

Slide Five
The fifth slide is also a continuation of the different vocabulary. In this specific slide we dicussed mainly about the complimentary event. The example he asked was, if there was a sudden death single tennis tournament and there were 54 players, how many games would be played if there could only be one winner? The easiest way of coming up with the answer is asking yourself, "how many losers would there be" The answer is 53 because only one player could win. Another example is using a coin or a die. Basically, you're looking for the opposite. So if P(E) = a then P(E¹) = 1-a.

Slide Six
In the next slide, we had to determine the sample space when a fair die is rolled once. Since it is possible to roll either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, the answer to the question is {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} *note: if you are asked to determine the sample space you must use brace brackets { }*
The next question was to determine the sample space for rolling a six sided die and flipping a coin. You could either use a tree diagram or a chart to find the answer. In this case we first used the tree diagram to find the answer. The first two branches consited of Heads and Tails and each had 6 branches to indicate the numbers on the die. Each number could either get H1 to H6 or T1 to T6 so the answer was 12.

Slide 7
We then had to determine the probability of rolling a 2 when rolling a fair die. The answer is 1/6 because there's only once chance of getting a 2 out of 6 different outcomes. We write this as P(2) = 1/6
In the next question it asked to determine the probability of getting a head and an odd number when rolling a die and flipping a coin. In this case we used the previous chart we made on slide 6 to find the answer. We then found that there are 3 possible chances out of 12 possible outcomes which also redues to 1/4. *note: remember to always reduce your fractions.

I believe I covered most of what we learned and talked about in class, so that means..I'm finished! (: This scribe actually took longer than I clearly expected considering I was running back and forth to my room and my sister's to watch American Idol. But enough of my life..toodles everyone, American Idol isn't over yet!

BTW..Homework is on slides 8-10 and don't forget to study for tomorrow's test! Goodluck and Ciao! OH and.. Next scribe is... "what it do PAUL wall" (: