Lecture 2: Introduction to Probability

Dr. Mohsen Hosseini

W. P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University
 Probability
What is the probability?
Probability tells us how likely something is to happen.

What is sample space?

All the possible outcomes of an experiment as an whole.

Example 1:
What is the sample space (all possible outcomes) when you roll a dice?
S={1,2,3,4,5,6}

Example 2:
What is the sample space (all possible outcomes) when you flip a coin?
S= {H, T} H and T stands for Head and Tail respectively.

What is Outcome?
Any possible result of the sample space S for a random experiment.
 Probability

Probability =

• Let’s say you flip a coin, what is the probability of getting head
(H)? Answer: ½

• Let’s say you roll a dice, then what is the probability that you
get number 4?

Probability = Outcome of interest / all possible outcomes

There are 6 possible numbers {1,2,3,4,5,6} that can appeared on

the dice. We are interested to see number 4 so the probability is
1/6.
Skydiving and Probability

• 2.8 Million Skydives Happened in 2020

• 11 skydiving deaths out of 2.8 million who
jumped.

What is the probability of death for a potential

skydiver?

Probability =

Probability =
 Probability
Consider a box that contains 3 blue balls, 4 black balls, and
5 red balls. We randomly choose one ball from the box.

a) What is the probability that the ball is red.

Answer: number of red balls / total number of balls = 5/12
b) What is the probability that the ball is blue.
Answer: number of blue balls / total number of balls =
3/12
 Probability– Sample Space

You roll two dices together. What is

the sample space?

S={(1,1), (1,2),…,(6,6)}
 Example of Sample Space
Determine the sample space for:
a) A multi-choice exam with 20 questions
S={0,1,2,3,4,5,…,20}
b) Number of accidents that occur in a year
S={0,1,2,3,4,…}
c) The time that TV can be used without any
repair
S=[0, +
 Probability
Let’s assume you repeat the experiment of filliping a coin
until you observe a Head. What is the sample space for
this experiment.

Answer: you flip the coin for the first time, if you observe
Head, then you stop and you are done. If you’ve not
observed Head for the first time (meaning you get Tail for
the first time, then you repeat the experiment until you
get Head (H).

S={H, TH, TTH, TTTH, TTTTH, TTTTTH, ….}

 Probability– Sample Space
A supplier supply coil spring to manufacturer. The manufacturer
inspect the receive items form supplier to make sure the coil
springs are not defective. If the inspector at manufacturing facility
choose 3 coil springs randomly for quality control inspection. What
are the sample space (possible outcomes)?

H:healthy item
D: Defective item

S= {HHH, HDH, HHD, HDD, DHH, DDH, DHD, DDD}

If our samples space is the number of defective items, then sample

space (S) is:

S={0,1,2,3} where S represents the number of defective items

 Probability
Consider example in previous slide. What is the probability of
getting all three items defective?

Answer: 1/8 outcome of interest:{DDD}

All possible outcome:
S= {HHH, HDH, HHD, HDD, DHH, DDH, DHD, DDD}

What is the probability of getting exactly two defective items.

Outcome of interest: {HDD, DDH, DHD}
Answer: 3/8 or 0.375 or 37.5%
There is 37.5% chance that we get exactly two defective
items.
 Probability
Let’s say we roll two dices together.

a) What is the probability that the sum of numbers on both

dices are less than 3.

P = outcome of interest / possible outcomes

Possible outcomes = {(1,1), (1,2), (1,3), (1,4), (1,5), (1,6),

(2,1), (2,2), (2,3), (2,4), (2,5), (2,6), (3,1), (3,2), (3,3), (3,4), There are 36
(3,5), (3,6), (4,1), (4,2), (4,3), (4,4), (4,5), (4,6), (5,1), (5,2), possible
(5,3), (5,4), (5,5), (5, 6), (6,1), (6,2), (6,3), (6,4), (6,5), (6,6)} outcomes for
rolling two dices
Outcome of interest = {(1,1)} there is only 1 event. together
So the probability is 1/36 or 0.0278

b) What is the probability that the sum of numbers on both

dices are greater than 10?

Outcome of interest = {(5,6), (6,5), (6,6)}

So the probability is 3/36 = 0.083
 Probability
Let’s flip a coin twice. Show the sample space
(possible outcomes) and the corresponding
probabilities.

S TT TH HT HH
Probability
1/4 1/4 1/4 1/4

Sum of probabilities =1 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/4 =1

 Probability
Let’s assume that a dice is designed in a way that chance of getting even number
is as twice as getting odd number. Show the possible outcomes and their
corresponding probabilities.

Answer:
S or sample space={1,2,3,4,5,6}

Let’s assume that the chance of getting odd number is w, then the chance of
getting even number is 2w.

{1,2,3,4,5,6}

w+ 2w+ w+ 2w+ w+ 2w= 1, 9w= 1, w=1/9

the chance of getting odd number is 1/9, and the chance of getting even number
is 2w or 2/9.
 Probability

S 1 2 3 4 5 6
Probabilities 1/9 2/9 1/9 2/9 1/9 2/9
 Infinite Sample Space
• Infinite sample space consists of infinite
number of possible outcomes.

: possible outcome where there is a probability

associated with each outcome, and
 Example of Infinite Sample Space
Let’s assume that we keep flipping a coin until we
observe head (H). We stop the experiment when
the head (H) is observed.
a) Show the sample space (possible outcomes)
and the probability of each outcome
b) What is the probability that head (H) occurs
only on odd number of times.
c) What is the probability that we need to flip
the coin at least 7 times to get Head (H).
 Example of Infinite Sample Space (Cont.)
a)
S H TH TTH TTTH ….

Probability ….

b) Let’s suppose represents coin flipping and A is the odd number of times that we flip
the coin
A={
c)
 Two-Events Venn Diagram
S
A B

S={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} Assume that S represents the sample space of an

experiment

A= {1,2,3,4,5,6} A is a an event that represents the numbers whose value is less

than 7.
B={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} B is an event that represents the numbers whose value is less
than 9.
Two-Events Venn Diagram (Cont.)
S
A B
A= {1,2,3,4,5,6}

B={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}

Event A is a subset of event B (A, because every element that exist in event A is
also exist in event B.

is a set that includes joint elements of A and B (both events), This is an

intersection operation between events A and B

,6,7,8} Is a set that includes the elements of each event

Two-Events Venn Diagram (Cont.)

A B
The shaded portion in the middle
𝐴∩ 𝐵 represents the elements that are
in both event A and event B
𝐴∩ 𝐵={ 𝑥 : 𝑥 ⊂ 𝐴 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑥 ⊂ 𝐵 }

A B
The shaded Venn diagram
represents the elements that are
in both event A or event B
𝐴∪ 𝐵={𝑥 : 𝑥 ⊂ 𝐴𝑜𝑟 𝑥 ⊂ 𝐵 }
𝐴∪ 𝐵
 A-B or A\B

B-A or B\A

Example:

A={1,2,3,4,5,6}
B ={2,3,7,8}

A-B={1,4,5,6}
B-A={7,8}
• Independent events: Two events called independent when the
occurrence of one event does not depend on the other one. No
dependency between them.
Two examples of common independent variables are age and time.

• Disjoint or mutually exclusive events: Two events are mutually

exclusive when they do not have any joint (common) elements.
This means the intersection between them is an empty set.
Mutually exclusive events are events that can not happen at the
same time. Examples include: right and left hand turns, even and
odd numbers on a die, winning and losing a game, or running and
walking

• The complement of event A is an event in which A does not occur.

Let’s say that event A is an event that supplier makes profit, the
complement of this event is when the supplier does not make
profit.
 OR AND

=
when events A and B are independent
OR

AND
De Morgan’s Law
Not
not (A or B) = (not A) and (not B)

not (A and B) = (not A) or (not B)

De Morgan’s Law (Cont.)
Example:

A customer who walks into Walmart will possibly

purchase from home/appliances section with a probability
of 0.12 and with the probability of 0.29 from dairy
products section. Assuming that there is 0.07 chance that
a customer purchase from both home/appliance section
and dairy products section.
a) What is the probability that a customer purchase from
home/appliances or dairy product section?
b) What is the probability that customer neither purchase
from home/appliances nor dairy product section?
a)

b)
Example:
Samsung is trying to launch 4 different new cell
phones to the market. The chance that cell phone
A succeed and attract the market is as twice as cell
phone B, and the chance of succeed for cell phone
B is as twice as cell phone C, and the chance for
cell phones C and D are equal.
a) What is the probability that cell phone A fails in
the market (not succeed)?
b) What is the probability that cell phone B fails in
the market (not succeed)?
a)

b)