Basic Concepts, Probability

Basic Concepts

a) What does “prediction” mean?
A: Is making a guess about something that will happen in the future.
b) What is likely?
A: That is possible to happen.
c) What do you think aboutthe sentence “Today, rain is likely”
A: It is possible that today will rain.
d) What is the difference between certainty and possibility?
A: Certainty is that you are sure something will happenand possibility is like a guess, it is possible to happened but you are not sure.
e) What is gambling?
A: When you make a bet.
f) What does “random” mean?
A: Is a process of selection in which a“thing” or item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.


History of Probability

Probability refers to the likelihood of something to happen. Probability is anywhere in between ofcertain to impossible. One example is winning the lottery; if you buy a lottery ticket you have a chance of winning. The more tickets you buy the more probable is that you win. It is all about probability.Other examples can be the weather or medical information. How probable is that it will rain today or how probable is that you develop a disease.
Probability became very important in the math fielddue to its daily use.

Probability and randomness has always been a topic of interest in the human being but its study began in the XVII century when Pierre Fermat and Blaise Pascal tried to resolverelated problems of games of chance. It is believed that Cardano, who was a game of chance player, was the first one to show interest in the understanding of probability; he wrote a book about thiskind of games back in 1520 but it was released until 1660.
Christian Huygens also wrote a book called “Calculating in Games of Chance” which was released in 1657 backing up Fermat and Pascal’s theory.In the XVIII century the popularity of games of chance made possible the development of more studies related to probability.
Works like the binomial distribution by Bernoulli in 1713 and The...