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Chapter 2:

Random Variables and Probability Distributions


Lesson 1: Probability
TIME FRAME: 1 hour
OVERVIEW OF LESSON
In this activity, students firstly review some basic concepts about probability that they may have
learned prior to grade 11. Then they are given extra concepts, on conditional probability, and
discussions on the classical birthday problem that discusses the chance of having at least two
people in a room share the same birthday.
LEARNING COMPETENCIES: At the end of the lesson, the learner should be able to

define probability in terms of empirical frequencies;


show how to apply the General Addition Rule, and the Multiplication Rule;
make use of a tree diagram for conditional probabilities.

LESSON OUTLINE:
1. Introduction / Motivation : What is Probability?
2. Main Lesson: Computing the Probability of an Event
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON
(A) Introduction / Motivation : What is Probability and How to Assign It?
Begin the session with a discussion regarding uncertainty about the summaries generated
from data, especially when the data is a random sample of a larger population of units (i.e.
people, farms, firms, etc).
Examples: (i) approval ratings or proportion of people voting for candidate (in an
opinion poll); (ii) average family income (in the Philippine Statistical Authoritys
triennial Family Income and Expenditure Survey); (iii) average prices of commodities
(from sample outlets)
Explain that we can quantify uncertainty through the notion of PROBABILITY (or Chance).
Suggest to students that if they were asked for the probability that they would pass the next
quiz, they may give a number between 0% and 100 percent. Typically, the chances of a
future outcome may be based on some past experience of data collected. Perhaps, very
studious learners have passed their quizzes 100 percent of the time, while average students
may have passed their quizzes 85 percent of the time.
When considering probabilities of events, students should be guided to consider a particular
context in which possible outcomes are well defined and can be specified, at least in
principle, beforehand. This context is called a random process: we do not know which of the
possible outcomes will occur, but we do know what is on the list of possible outcomes.
Students can be informed that it can be helpful to view the probability of an event as its
long-run empirical frequency, i.e. the fraction of times that the event may have occurred
under repeated trials of the random process. (In the next lesson, we shall call this the
empirical probability, and we shall mention that in practice, we expect this empirical
probabilities to stabilize toward some theoretical probability: this is called the law of large
numbers).
Ask students to think of random processes and an event where:
a. the outcome is certain. Examples may be getting a head (event) in the next toss of a
two-headed coin (random process); or getting a number at most 6 (event) when a die is
thrown once (random process)
b. the outcome is impossible. Examples may be getting a tail (event) in the next toss of a
two-headed coin (random process); or getting a number greater than 6 (event) when a die
is thrown once (random process)
c. the outcome has an even chance of occurring. Examples may be a couple having a boy
(event) as their next child (random process); getting a red card (event) when randomly
selecting a card from a deck of cards (random process)
d. the outcome has a strong but not a certain chance of occurring. Example might be
getting a sum of at most 11 (event) when a pair of dice is thrown (random process).
Then ask them what is the probability associated with these events. (answers are 100 percent
for certain events, 0 percent for impossible events, and 50 percent for outcomes with even
chance of occurring; for the example in d, there are 36 possible outcomes for tossing a pair of
fair dice, 35 of them will have at most a sum of 11, so the chance of getting at most 11 is
35/36). The closer the value of the probability to 1, the more likely the event will occur; the
closer to 0, the less likely its occurrence.
Important to point out to students the following properties of the probability of an event:

the probability of an event is a non-negative value; in fact it ranges from zero (when
the event is impossible) to one (when the event is sure); the closer the value to one,
the more likely the event will occur
the probability of the sure event is one (in other words, the chance of a sure event is
100 percent).
if A and B are mutually exclusive events, meaning that it is impossible for these two
events to occur at the same time, then P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B).
This is called the Addition Rule.
A more general result (also called the General Addition Rule) states that :
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)
Geometrically, from a Venn Diagram, the area of the union of A and B is the sum of the
areas, but if we added the intersection of A B twice, so we have need to subtract this area
from the sum of the areas of A and B.

Illustrate that these properties can help us more readily compute for the probabilities of
events.
P(at most a sum of 12 when tossing a pair of fair dice) =
P(at most a sum of 11 OR a sum of 12) = P (at most a sum of 11) + P(sum of 12)
But P(at most a sum of 12) = 1 and P (sum of 12) = 1/36 ; thus
P (at most a sum of 11) = 1 1 /36 = 35/36

In general, if we are interested in Ac, the complement of an event A, i.e. the event that
happens when A does not, since
P(A or Ac) = P(A) + P(Ac) and P(A or Ac) = P(Sure event) = 100%
Thus,
P(A) + P(Ac) = 1 or equivalently

P(Ac) = 1 P(A)

In consequence, the chance that an event does not occur is 1 minus the chance it does occur.
In terms of a Venn Diagram below, given a Sure Event S (represented by a square with area
100% ), and an event A (represented by the triangle whose area represents the probability of
A), then the chance of an event A not happening is one minus the chance of event A
happening (i.e. area of the square minus the area of the triangle).
Extra Notes: Mention also to students that:
(1) Historically, probability was studied by gamblers who wanted to increase their winnings
(or at least decrease their losses).
(2) Probability describes random behavior, but does anything really happen at random? Even
Albert Einstein, when confronted by theories of quantum mechanics, was said to have
pointed out that God does not play dice. Yet, many events, especially in nature seem to
display random behavior. In many real life situations we will be able to model these by
random processes, and thus apply probability to understand the behavior of these situations.
(B) Main Lesson : Computing Probabilities of Events

Mention to students that the calculation of the probability of an event may sometimes be
considered directly from the nature of the phenomenon/random process, with some
assumptions of symmetry. Some underlying outcomes may be equally likely by
assumption: such as fair coins, fair dice. In practice, these assumptions need to be tested and
will be the subject of inquiry in future lesions. These assumptions are simplifications to help
us calculate probabilities.

Example 1: Tell students that a box contains green and blue chips; A chip is drawn from the
box, if it is green you win 100 pesos, if it is blue you win nothing.
Students have a choice between two boxes:
Box A with 3 blue chips and 2 green chips
Box B with 30 blue chips and 20 green chips
Which would students prefer???
Some students may say B, but tell students that it actually should not matter, because the
chance of winning 100 pesos is 2/5 =40% in box A, while in box B, the chance of winning is
20/50 =40%.

Conditional Probability
Mention to students that sometimes, we may have extra information that can change the
probability of an event. Give the following definition of conditional probability.
The conditional probability of event A given that B has occurred is denoted as P(A|
B) and defined as

P (AB)
P ( A|B )=
P( B)

Example 2: Suppose that we want to randomly select a student from among grades 9 to 12 in
a certain school

Grade Sex Total


Male Female

9 84 145 229

10 40 82 122

11 36 52 88

12 25 36 61

Total 185 315 500

The chance of selecting a grade11 student given that the student is male can be computed as
follows:
Define events A and B as:
A = event that student selected is a grade 11 student;
B = event that student selected is male then
P ( AB) 84 /500 84
P ( A|B )= = =
P(B) 185 /500 185

Example 3: A king comes from a family of two children, what is the chance that the king has
a sister?
Remind students here that as the king comes from a family of two children, we are given
extra information that this family of two children has a boy, the king.
What we want to compute here is the probability that the sibling of the king is a girl.
Let B the event of having at least one boy. So B={(b,b),(b,g),(g,b)}, where (x,y) means the
sex of each child and the possible values are b for boy and g for girl. Then A is the event that
the king's sibling is a girl, A={(b,g),(g,b)}.
While the original sample space S of all possible outcomes is S={(b,b),(g,b),(b,g),(g,g)},
each outcome has chance of occurring.
However, P (A | B ) = P (A and B ) / P(B) = (2/4) / (3/4) = 2/3

Independent Events
Sometimes, the extra information provided may not really change the probability of an event.
In this case, the events are said to be independent. The conditional probability of A given B
may still be equal to the (unconditional) probability of event A.
Two events A and B are said to be independent if

P (A and B) = P (A) P (B)

This is also called the Multiplication Rule. Intuitively, we call events such as tossing a coin
(or dice) several times independent since future tosses are not affected by previous outcomes.
If however, the events are not independent then we can still obtain the probability that both
events A and B will occur using the definition of conditional probability:
P (A and B) = P (A ) P (B | A)

Example 4: Tell students to suppose that we have a box that contains three tickets marked 1,
2, and 3. We shake the box, draw out one ticket at random; shake the box, draw out a second
ticket. What would be the probability of getting a sum of three if tickets are drawn with
replacement? without replacement?
The possible sums for the two tickets drawn with replacement are shown in a contingency
table and tree diagram below

In consequence the probability of getting a sum of three is :

P (sum of three) = 2/9

While if the tickets are drawn without replacement, we have

P (sum of three) = 2/6 = 1/3

Exercise 5: (The Birthday Problem, originally posed by Richard von Mises in 1939,
reprinted in English in 1964) Mention to students that in a room filled with more than 23
people, there is more than half a chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday,
and if there are more people, the chances increase further toward 100% (about 99.9% with 70
people). Try it out with students in your class.

Tell students to identify how many have a birthday on January. Try to see if you can get a
match. Go to February, if you dont find anyone matching, then March, and so forth.

The chance of 2 people having different birthdays is:


1 364
1 =
365 365 = 0.997260

The chance of N people having different birthdays is:

1 2 N 1
1 1 1
365 365 365

So the chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday is:

p(N) = 1[]

We have the probabilities computed below for several values of N.

N 10 20 23 30 50 57
p(N) 11.7% 41.1% 50.7% 70.6% 97.0% 99.0%

KEY POINTS

Probability is a numerical of the likelihood of occurrence of an event; its value is between 0


and 1; when the value approaches 1, this means the event is very likely to occur; while a
value close to 0 means it is not likely to occur.

When A and B are mutually exclusive events, then the probability of A or B is


P (A or B ) = P(A) + P (B) (this is called the Addition Rule)

If A and B are independent events, then the probability of A and B is

P(A and B) = P(A) P(B) (this is called the Multiplication Rule)



REFERENCES
Much of the material here adapted from:
De Veau, R. D., Velleman, P. F., and Bock, D. E. (2006). Intro Stats. Pearson Ed. Inc.
Workbooks in Statistics 1: 11th Edition, Institute of Statistics, UP Los Banos, College Laguna
4031
http://www.amsi.org.au/ESA_Senior_Years/PDF/Probability4a.pdf
ASSESSMENT

1. What would be the probability of

a. picking a black card at random from a standard deck of 52 cards?


b. picking a face card (i.e. a king, queen, or jack)?
c. not picking a face card?

Soln:

a. P(Black) = 26/52= ;
b. P(Face)= 12/52 = 3/13 ;
c. P(not Face) = 1 (3 /13) =10/13

2. What is the probability of rolling, on a fair dice :

a. a 3?
b. an even number?
c. zero?
d. a number greater than 4?
e. a number lying between 0 and 7?
f. a multiple of 3 given that an even number was drawn

Soln:
a. P(3) = 1/6 ;
b. P(Even)= 3/6 = 1/2 ;
c. P(0) = 0 ;
d. P(greater than 4) = P(5 or 6) = 2/6 = 1/3 ;
e. P(between 0 and 7) = P(1 or 2 or 3 or 6) = 6/6 = 1
f. P(multiple of 3 given even number) = P(multiple of 3 and even) / P(even)
= P(6)/P(2 or 4 or 6) = (1/6) / (3/6 ) = 1/3

3. A standard deck of playing cards is well shuffled and from it, you are given two cards.
You can have 0, 1, or 2 aces: three possibilities altogether. So the probability that you
have two aces is equal to 1/3. What is flawed about this argument?

Soln:
The outcomes are not equally likely. There are (52)(51)/2=1326 ways of selecting the
first two cards. These are the equally likely outcomes. Of these ways, there would be (4)
(3)/2=6 ways of selecting two aces; (48)(47)/2=1128 ways of selecting no aces, and
1326-6-1128=192 ways of selecting one ace. So, the chance of getting two aces is 6/1326
and not 1/3.
4. You shuffle a deck of playing card, and then start turning the cards one at a time. The
first one is black. The second one is also a black card. So is the third, and this happens up
to the 10th card. You start thinking, the next one will likely be red! Are you correct in
this reasoning?

Soln: Yes, there are 42 cards left, 26 red and only 16 black However, likely does not
mean certainty there is 16/42 chance that it is going to be black.

5. The family of Tony delivers newpapers, one to each house in their village.

Philippine Star 250 Manila Times 140


Philippine Daily Inquirer 300 Manila Standard Today 100
Manila Bulletin 150 Daily Tribune 60

What is the probability that a house picked at random has:


a. the Manila Times?
b. the Manila Standard Today or the Philippine Daily Inquirer?
c. a newspaper other than Daily Tribune?

Soln:
a. P(Manila Times) = 140/1000 =7/50;
b. P(Manila Standard Today or PDI)= (100 + 300)/1000 = 2/5 ;
c. P(other than Daily Tribune) = 1 P(Daily Tribune) = 1 (60/1000)= 940/1000 = 47/50

6. A class is going to play three games. In each game some cards are put into a bag. Each
card has a square or a circle on it. One card will be taken out, then put back. If it is a
circle, the boys will get a point. If it is a square, the girls will get a point.

a. Which game are the girls least likely to win? Why?


a. Which game are the boys most likely to win? Why?
c. Which game are the girls certain to win?
d. Which game is impossible for the boys to win?
e. Which game is it equally likely that the boys or girls win?
f. Are any of the games unfair? Why?

Soln:

a. game 3. For girls, chance of winning games 1, 2, and 3 are respectively, 4/8=50%,
8/8=100%, 4/12 = 33.3%.
b.game 3. For boys, chance of winning games 1, 2, and 3 are respectively, 4/8=50%,
0/8=0%, 8/12 = 66.7%.
c. game 2, chance is 100%
d. game 2, chance is 0%
e. game 1.
f. games 2 and 3.

7. In a computer minefield game, mines are hidden on grids. When you land randomly
on a square with a mine, you are out of the game.

a. The circles indicate where the mines are hidden on three different grids. On
which of the three grids is it hardest to survive?

b. Grid 1 above is a 3 by 6 grid with 6 mines. On which of the following grids is it


hardest to survive?

X. 99 mines on a 30 by 16 grid
Y. 40 mines on a 16 by 16 grid
Z. 10 mines on an 8 by 8 grid

Explain your reasoning.


a. P(hit a mine) in grid 1, 2 and 3, respectively is 6/18=33.3%, 8/25=32%, 7/20=35%, thus
hardest to survive in grid 3
b. P(hit a mine) in X, Y, Z grid, respectively is 99/(30x16) = 0.20625, 40/(16x16)=0.15625,
10/8x8)=0.15625 so hardest to survive in grid X.

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