BASIC CONCEPT OF

PROBABILITY
MR EYOB TADESSE ( MPH / EPIDEMIOLOGY AND BIOSTATISTICS)
INTRODUCTION

• Probability is the language of chance.

• The deliberate use of chance is the central idea of statistical designs for producing data.
• Probabilities are used in everyday communication
• Probability theory was developed out of attempting to solve problems related to games of
chance such as tossing a coin, rolling a die etc.
QUESTION FROM SIMPLE PROBABILITIES

1.What is the probability that a card drawn at random from a deck of cards
will be an ace ?
2.A book contains 32 pages numbered 1, 2, ..., 32. If a student randomly
opens the book, what is the probability that the page number contains digit
7?
3.A mother in the delivery room to give birth and the health worker
informed her as she will deliver at 9:30 pm. She is eager to give birth of a
daughter. What is the probability that she will get what she wants?
PROBABILITIES HAVE THE FOLLOWING BASIC
PROPERTIES
1. The probability of an event E, denoted by Pr(E), always satisfies 0 ≤ Pr(E) ≤ 1.
2. Generally the probability of two events happening is given by
P(AuB)=P(A)+P(B)-P(AnB)

3. If outcomes A and B are two events that cannot both happen at the same time,
then Pr(A or B occurs) = Pr(A) + Pr(B)
4. If two events are independent then
P(AnB)=P(A).P(B)
• Hypertension Let A be the event that a person has normotensive diastolic blood pressure
(DBP) readings (DBP < 90), and let B be the event that a person has borderline DBP
readings (90 ≤ DBP < 95). Suppose that Pr(A) =0.7, and Pr(B) = 0.1. Let Z be the event
that a person has a DBP < 95. Then
• Pr(Z P ) = r A( ) + Pr(B) = 0.8
• because the events A and B cannot occur at the same time.
ADDITION RULES

• Rule 1: If 2 events, B & C, are mutually exclusive (i.e., no overlap) then the probability
that one or both occur is P(B or C) = P(B ∪ C) = P(B) + P(C)
• Rule 2: For any given pair of events, if the sum of their probabilities is equal to one, then
those two events are mutually exclusive.
• Rule 3: For any 2 events, A & B, not mutually exclusive, the probability that one or both
occur is P(A or B) = P(A∪B) = P(A)+P(B)-P(A n B)
ADDITIONS…

• If two events A and B are not mutually exclusive, then, P (A U B) = P (A) + P (B) – P (A
and B)
• Example
• 1. There are 80 nurses and 40 physicians in a hospital. Of these, 70 nurses and 15
physicians are females. If a staff person is selected at random, find the probability that the
subject is a nurse or male.
Male Female Total
Nurse 10 70 80
Physician 25 15 40
Total 35 85 120
P(N u M) = P(N) + P(M) – P(N n M)
= 80/120 + 35/ 120 – 10/ 120 = 105/ 120
SUMMARY OF ADDITIVE RULE
• When two events are said to be independent of each other, what this means is that
the probability that one event occurs in no way affects the probability of the other event
occurring.
• For any two events A and B with non-zero probability are Independent events, each of
the following must be true:
• P (A/B)= P(A) , and P(B/A)= P(B) ; and so, P(A and B)= P(A) P(B)
MULTIPLICATIVE RULE

• Let’s assume two questions on a test, the first question is a true/false and the
second is a multiple question type with five possible answers (a, b, c, d, e)
• True or False: Heart is an organ which pumps blood in our body.
• MCQ: Which of the following human organ is used for breathing?
a. Brain b. Liver c. Lung d. Kidney e. Heart
• If the answers are random guesses the 10 possible outcomes are equally
likely so
CONT’D..

•
• Eg. 1) A classic example is n tosses of a coin and the chances that on each
toss it lands heads. These are independent events. The chance of heads on any
one toss is independent of the number of previous heads. No matter how
many heads have already been observed, the chance of heads on the next toss
is ½.
• Eg 2) a similar situation prevails with the sex of offspring. The chance of a
male is approximately ½. Regardless of the sexes of previous offspring, the
chance the next child is a male is still ½.
CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY

• Sometimes the chance a particular event happens depends on the outcome of some
other event. This applies obviously with many events that are spread out in time
• E.g. The chance a patient with some disease survives the next year depends on his
having survived to the present time. Such probabilities are called conditional.
• The notation is Pr (B/A), which is read as “the probability event B occurs given that
event A has already occurred.”
• Let A and B be two events of a sample space S. The conditional probability of an event
A, given B, denoted by Pr (A/B) = P (A n B) / P (B), P (B)  0.
• Similarly, P (B/A) = P(A n B) / P(A) , P(A)  0. This can be taken as an alternative
form of the multiplicative law.
• Where for non-independent events A and B
• P (A and B) = P (A/B) P(B) or P(A and B)= P(B/A)P(A)
• Eg. Suppose in country X the chance that an infant lives to age 25 is .95,
whereas the chance that he lives to age 65 is .65. For the latter, it is
understood that to survive to age 65 means to survive both from birth to
age 25 and from age 25 to 65. What is the chance that a person 25 years of
age survives to age 65?
CONT’D…

Then, Pr (B/A) = Pr (A n B) / Pr (A) = .65/.95 = .684. That is, a person aged

25 has a 68.4 percent chance of living to age 65.
EXAMPLES

1)Consider selecting a child at random from a kindergarten; let A = event a child is

infected with ascariasis, G = event a child has giardiasis. Suppose P(A) = .30,
P(G) = .25, P(A n G) = .13.
a) What’s the probability that a child randomly selected from the KG has giardiasis,
given that we know s/he has ascariasis?
b) What is the probability that a child randomly selected from the KG will test
negative for these intestinal parasites?
SUMMARY OF MULTIPLICATIVE RULE
PERMUTATIONS

The number of possible permutations is the number of different orders in which particular
events occur. The number of possible permutations are
n!
Np 
r ( n  r )!
where r is the number of events in the series, n is the number of possible events, and n!
denotes the factorial of
n = the product of all the positive integers from 1 to n.
COMBINATIONS

When the order in which the events occurred is of no interest, we are dealing with
combinations. The number of possible combinations is

n  n!
Nc   
r  r!(n  r)!
where r is the number of events in the series, n is the number of possible events, and
n! denotes the factorial of n = the product of all the positive integers from 1 to n.


BAYES' THEOREM

•Bayes' Theorem shows the relationship between a conditional probability and its
inverse.

•i.e. it allows us to make an inference from

the probability of a hypothesis given the evidence to
the probability of that evidence given the hypothesis
and vice versa
 BAYES' THEOREM

•P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A)

P(B)

•P(A) – the PRIOR PROBABILITY – represents your knowledge about A

before you have gathered data.

•e.g. if 0.01 of a population has schizophrenia then the probability that a

person drawn at random would have schizophrenia is 0.01
 BAYES' THEOREM

•P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A)

P(B)

•P(B|A) – the CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY – the probability of B, given

A.

•e.g. you are trying to roll a total of 8 on two dice. What is the probability that
you achieve this, given that the first die rolled a 6?
 BAYES' THEOREM

•P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A)

P(B)

•So the theorem says:

•The probability of A given B is equal to the probability of B given A, times

the prior probability of A, divided by the prior probability of B.
•THE END