Module : Business Statistical Analysis
Module Code: MTU07202
Laban Gasper
College of Business Education (CBE)
Email :
[email protected] June 4, 2025
Lecture 3: Probability Theory
1Many events can’t be predicted with total certainty. The best
we can say is how likely they are to happen, using the idea of
probability.
2 Probability as a general concept can be defined as the chance of
an event occurring.
3 If you want to predict the chance of something happening in the
future, you use probability
Vocabularies used in probability
Probability Experiment
A probability experiment is a repeatable process that give rise to a
number of outcomes .
An outcome is the result of a single trial of a probability experiment.
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Laban Gasper (CBE) Course instructor (B/Statistical Analysis) June 4, 2025 2 / 26
A sample space
Is the set of all possible outcomes of a probability experiment.
An event
Is a subset of the sample space.
1 Events and sample spaces are sets and set notation is used to
describe them
2 We use upper case letters to denote events
3 The probability of an event is the chance that the event will
occur as a result of an experiment.
4 Where outcomes are equally likely the probability of an event is
the number of outcomes in the event divided by the total
number of possible outcomes in the sample space. i.e
n(E)
P(E ) =
n(S)
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Laban Gasper (CBE) Course instructor (B/Statistical Analysis) June 4, 2025 3 / 26
An impossible event has probability 0 and an event that is
certain has probability 1
As all events have probabilities between impossible (0) and
certain (1), then probabilities are usually written as a fraction, a
decimal or sometimes as a percentage.
In this module we will write probabilities as fractions or decimals
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Example 01
When we flip a coin then sample space is
S = {H, T }
Where, H denotes that the coin lands "Heads up" and T denotes that
the coin lands "Tail up"
Example 02
When we roll a fair die then the sample space is
S = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
Problem 01
Find the sample space when we toss a coil
a. 3 times
b. 4 times
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Laban Gasper (CBE) Course instructor (B/Statistical Analysis) June 4, 2025 5 / 26
For each of the following experiments, identify the sample space and
find the probability of the event specified
1 Throwing a six sided die once and recording if the number face
up is odd or even.
Find the probability of an even number landing face up
Find the probability of an odd number landing face up
2 Tossing two coins.
Find the probability of getting one head
Find the probability of getting two heads
Find the probability of the same outcome on each coin
3 A card is drawn from a pack of 52 playing cards
Find the probability that the card is a heart
Find the probability of drawing a spade
4 Throwing a die and tossing a coin. Find the probability of a
head and a 6
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Laban Gasper (CBE) Course instructor (B/Statistical Analysis) June 4, 2025 6 / 26
Probability distributions
1 Constructing Probability distributions
2 Mean, Variance and Standard deviation of a probability
distribution
3 Visit Edexcel-Maths-S1, Page 150 - 165
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