Course Overview
Probability is used to quantify an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we are not certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form “Will a specific event occur?” The attitude of mind is of the form “How certain are we that the event will occur?” The certainty we adopt can be described in terms of a numerical measure and this number, between 0 and 1 (where 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates certainty), we call probability. Thus the higher the probability of an event, the more certain we are that the event will occur. A simple example would be the toss of a fair coin. Since the 2 outcomes are deemed equiprobable, the probability of “heads” equals the probability of “tails” and each probability is 1/2 or equivalently a 50% chance of either “heads” or “tails”.
