ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a brief review of the theory of probability. It describes the basic probability concepts and provides a BASIC computer program to generate any number of simulated flips of a fair coin and to compute the proportion that comes out “heads.” A Venn diagram is a graph allowing one conceptually to represent the occurrence of various events of interest. The chapter illustrates the Venn diagram for two events that are not mutually exclusive and for two mutually exclusive events. A useful law called Bayes’ Theorem can be developed from the concept of conditional probability. The chapter presents an example to illustrate the conditional probability and the concepts of Bayes' Theorem. Using the Theorem, one can recalculate the probability that the original event occurred each time a new sample is taken and its outcome is known. The chapter also includes exercise problems related to the concepts of probability theory.