Purpose

• To determine a sample space.

• To define what is meant by the probability of an
event.
• To discuss conditional probability.
• To develop the notion of independent events.
• To develop Bayes’s formula.
Sections to be Covered

Section 8.3 Sample Spaces and Events

Section 8.4 Probability
Section 8.5 Conditional Probability and Stochastic Processes
Section 8.6 Independent Events
Section 8.7 Bayes’ Formula
Sample Spaces
• A sample space S is the set of all possible outcomes.
• The number of sample points is denoted #(S).
Example 1 – Sample Space: Toss of Two Coins

Two different coins are tossed, and the result (H or T) for

each coin is observed. Determine a sample space.

Solution: S  HH, HT, TH, TT

Example 3 – Sample Space: Jelly Beans in a Bag

A bag contains four jelly beans: one red, one pink, one
black, and one white.
a. A jelly bean is withdrawn at random, its color is noted,
and it is put back in the bag. Then a jelly bean is again
randomly withdrawn and its color noted. Describe a
sample space and determine the number of sample
points.

Solution:
Partial Sample Space: S p  RW, PB, RB, WW

Sample Points: 4  4  16
b. Determine the number of sample points in the sample
space if two jelly beans are selected in succession
without replacement and the colors are noted.

Solution:

Sample Points: 4  3  12 or 4 P2  12
Events
• Event E is a subset of the sample space for the
experiment.
Example 5 – Sample Space: Roll of Two Dice

A pair of dice is rolled once, and for each die, the number
that turns up is observed. Determine the number of sample
points.

Solution:

Sample Points: 6 · 6 = 36
Example 7 – Complement, Union, Intersection

Given the usual sample space S  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

for the rolling of a die, let E, F, and G be the events
E  1, 3, 5 F  3, 4, 5, 6 G  1

Determine each of the following events.

Solution:
a. Complement, E’  E '  2, 4, 6
b. Union: E  F  E  F  1, 3, 4, 5, 6
c. Intersect: E  F  E  F  3, 5
d. Intersect: F  G  F G  φ
e. Union: E  E’ 
E  E '  1, 3, 5  2, 4, 6  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6  S
f. Intersect: E  E’  E  E '  1, 3, 5  2, 4, 6  φ
• Properties of Events
Equiprobable Spaces
• S is called an equiprobable space if all events are
equally likely to occur.
• Probability of the simple event is P s i  
1
N
• If S is a finite equiprobable space, probability of E is

P E   P s1   P s2   ...  P s j 

# E 
P E  
# S 
Example 1 – Coin Tossing

Two fair coins are tossed, S  HH, HT, TH, TT

Determine the probability that
a. two heads occur
b. at least one head occurs

Solution:
# E  1
a. E = {HH}, probability is P E   
# S  4
b. F = {at least one head} where F  HH, HT, TH
Thus probability is # F  3
P F   
# S  4
Example 3 – Full House Poker Hand

Find the probability of being dealt a full house in a poker

game. A full house is three of one kind and two of
another, such as three queens and two 10’s. Express your
answer in terms of nCr .
# E  13 4 C3  12 4 C2
Solution: P full house   
# S  53 C5
Example 5 – Quality Control

From a production run of 5000 light bulbs, 2% of which

are defective, 1 bulb is selected at random. What is the
probability that the bulb is defective? What is the
probability that it is not defective?

Solution:
The number of outcomes in E is 0.02 · 5000 = 100.
# E  100
P E     0.02
# S  5000
Alternatively, probability (defective) is
 1 
P E   100    0.02
 5000 

Probability (not defective) is P E '  1  P E   1  0.02  0.98

Example 8 – Interrupted Gambling

Obtain Pascal and Fermat’s solution to the problem of

dividing the pot between two gamblers in an interrupted
game of chance, as described in the introduction to this
chapter. Recall that when the game was interrupted,
Player 1 needed r more “rounds” to win the pot outright
and that Player 2 needed s more rounds to win. It is
agreed that the pot should be divided so that each
player gets the value of the pot multiplied by the
probability that he or she would have won an
uninterrupted game.
Solution:

Probability that Player 1 will win is given by

s 1
P E0  E1  ...  Es 1   P E0   P E1   ...  P Es 1    P Ek 
k 0

Number of these outcomes which consist of k T’s is the

number of ways of choosing k from among n.
s 1
Ck

n 0
n
2n
P is a probability function, if both of the following are
true:
• 0 ≤ P(si) ≤ 1 for i = 1 to N
• P(s1) + P(s2) + ·· ·+ P(sN) = 1

Odds
• The odds in favor of event E occurring are the ratio
P E 
P E '

Finding Probability from Odds

• If the odds that event E occurs are a : b, then
P E  
a
ab
Example 10 – Odds for an A in an Exam

A student believes that the probability of getting an A on

the next mathematics exam is 0.2. What are the odds (in
favor) of this occurring?

Solution:

The odds of getting an A are

PE  0.2 1
   1: 4
PE ' 0.8 4
Conditional Probability
• If E and F are events associated with an equiprobable
sample space and F = ∅, then

# E  F 
P E F  
# F 
Example 1 – Jelly Beans in a Bag

A bag contains two blue jelly beans (say, B1 and B2) and
two white jelly beans (W1 and W2). If two jelly beans are
randomly taken from the bag, without replacement,
find the probability that the second jelly bean taken is
white, given that the first one is blue.
Solution:

Event W ∩ B consists of the outcomes in B for which

the second jelly bean is white:

P W B   
4 2
6 3
Conditional probability of an event E is given as

P E  F 
P E F   and P F   0
P F 
Example 3 – Quality Control

After the initial production run of a new style of steel desk,

a quality control technician found that 40% of the desks
had an alignment problem and 10% had both a defective
paint job and an alignment problem. If a desk is randomly
selected from this run, and it has an alignment problem,
what is the probability that it also has a defective paint
job?

Solution:
Let A and D be the events
We have P(A) = 0.4 and P(D ∩ A) = 0.1, thus
PD  A 0.1 1
PD A   
P A 0.4 4
General Multiplication Law

P E  F   P E P F E   P F P E F 
Example 5 – Advertising

A computer hardware company placed an ad for its new

modem in a popular computer magazine. The company
believes that the ad will be read by 32% of the magazine’s
readers and that 2% of those who read the ad will buy the
modem. Assume that this is true, and find the probability
that a reader of the magazine will read the ad and buy the
modem.
R is “read ad” and B is “buy modem”, thus

P R  B   P R P B R   0.32 0.02   0.0064

Example 7 – Cards

Two cards are drawn without replacement from a

standard deck of cards. Find the probability that both
cards are red.

Solution:
The desired probability is

P R1  R2   P R1 P R2 R1  

26 25 25
 
52 51 102
Example 9 – Jelly Beans in a Bag

Bag I contains one black and two red jelly beans, and Bag
II contains one pink jelly bean. A bag is selected at
random. Then a jelly bean is randomly taken from it and
placed in the other bag. A jelly bean is then randomly
taken from that bag. Find the probability that this jelly
bean is pink.
Solution:

This is a compound experiment with three trials:

a. Select a bag
b. Taking a jelly bean out
c. Putting it in the other bag and then taking a jelly
bean from that bag

P pink jelly bean on 2nd draw          1

1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 3 2 2 3 2 2 4
3

8
E and F are said to be independent events if either

P E F   P E  or P F E   P F 
Example 1 – Showing That Two Events Are Independent

A fair coin is tossed twice. Let E and F be the events

E = {head on first toss}
F = {head on second toss}
Determine whether or not E and F are independent events.

Solution:
# E  2 1
P E    
# S  4 2

# E  F  # HH 1
P E F    
# F  # F  2
Special Multiplication Law
If E and F are independent events, then

P E  F   P E P F 
Example 3 – Survival Rates

Suppose the probability of the event “Bob lives 20 more

years” (B) is 0.8 and the probability of the event “Doris
lives 20 more years” (D) is 0.85. Assume that B and D are
independent events.
a. Find the probability that both Bob and Doris live
20 more years.

Solution:

P B  D   P B P D   0.8 0.85   0.68

b. Find the probability that at least one of them lives 20
more years.

Solution:
P B  D   0.8  0.85  0.68  0.97

c. Find the probability that exactly one of them lives 20

more years.

Solution: P B  D'  P B P D'  0.8 0.15   0.12

P B'D   P B'P D   0.20.85   0.17
P E   0.12  0.17  0.29
Example 5 – Dice

Two fair dice, one red and the other green, are rolled, and
the numbers on the top faces are noted. Test whether P(E
∩ F ) = P(E)P(F ) to determine whether E and F are
independent.

Solution:
Event F has 6 outcomes which is
F  1,6 , 2,5 , 3,4 , 4,3 , 5,2 , 6,1

P E  F  
3 1
Thus the probability is 
36 12
Example 7 – Cards

Four cards are randomly drawn, with replacement, from a

deck of 52 cards. Find the probability that the cards
chosen, in order, are a king (K), a queen (Q), a jack (J), and
a heart (H).

Solution:
We obtain
P K  Q  J  H   P K P Q P J P H 
4 4 4 13 1
    
52 52 52 52 8788
• The conditional probability of Fi given that event E has
occurred is expressed by

P Fi P E Fi 
P Fi E  
P F1 P E F1   P F2 P E F2   ...  P Fn P E Fn 
Example 1 – Quality Control

Microchips are purchased from A, B, and C and are

randomly picked for assembling each camcorder. 20% of
the microchips come from A, 35% from B, and rest from
C. The probabilities that A is defective is 0.03, and the
corresponding probabilities for B and C are 0.02 and
0.01, respectively. A camcorder is selected at random
from a day’s production, and its microchip is found to be
defective.
Find the probability that it was supplied
(a) from A,
(b) from B, and
(c) from C.
(d) From what supplier was the microchip most likely
purchased?
Solution:
We define the following events,
S1  supplier A
S 2  supplier B
S3  supplier C
D  defective microchip

a. P S1 D   probability of path through S1 and D

probability of all paths to D


0.20.03 
0.20.03   0.35 0.02   0.45 0.01
12

35
b. P S2 D  
probability of path through S2 and D
probability of all paths to D


0.35 0.02 
0.0175
14

35

P S3 D  
probability of path through S3 and D
c. probability of all paths to D


0.45 0.01
0.0175
9

35
Union

Soccer ∪ Tennis = {alex, casey, drew, hunter, jade}

Intersection

Soccer ∩ Tennis = {casey, drew}

Difference

Soccer − Tennis = {alex, hunter}

Volleyball = {drew, glen, jade}
S = {alex, casey, drew, hunter}
T ∪ V = {casey, drew, jade, glen}
S ∩ V = {drew}
(S ∩ V) − T = {}
Universal Set
U − S = {blair, erin, francis, glen, ira, jade}
Complement

Sc = {blair, erin, francis, glen, ira, jade}