Probability
Probability is the chances of an event occurring sometime in the future. We use probability to find if there is a high percentage of something that event to occur, or not. The probability of something occurring is always between zero and one. The closer the number is to one, the greater the likelihood of the event to occur. Probability should always be written as a fraction, with all the possible events for the denominator (the number on the bottom of the fraction), and the correct events for the numerator (the number on the top of the fraction). There are two types of probability, theoretical and experimental. Theoretical is where you can use mathematical equations to find the correct probability. Experimental is where you are not able to find the probability without doing a test of the situation. An example of theoretical probability is if you have a deck of cards, and want to know what the chances of pulling out a spade; to find this you first make a fraction, on the bottom of the fraction you put the number of cards in the deck, and on the top you put the number of spades in the deck. An example of experimental probability is if you want to find out which stairs a group of people would use to get into a classroom, you would have to do an experiment to find out. When finding a probability, you are only seeing if there is a good chance of a certain event occurring, it is only an educated guess. It is used in many different real world situations. For example, if you are a professional poker player, you can use probability to find out your chances to get a certain card. Also in sports analysis when they are finding an athletes statistics, they use probability. Also if you are flipping a coin, probability can help you figure out in advance if you are going to flip a heads or a tails. You should always remember though, that this fraction is only an estimation, it will not give you a definite answer. For example if you flip a coin five times, it may very well land on heads each time. If you are trying to find the probability of landing on heads once if you flip it twice, it would be one half because there are two sides and heads is on one of the sides. If you are looking for a certain suit while playing a game of cards, then you first must find out the number of cards in the deck (fifty-two).
The Fundamental Counting Principle
The fundamental counting principle is a method used to find the total number of arrangements. It is used in finding probability by finding the nominator and the denominator. For example, if you have a shelf for all your canned food, and you want to put it into a different order, you can use the fundamental counting principle to find out how many different possibilities it will take. An example where you would use this is if you are watching a race with eight people, and you want to find out how many different ways the gold, silver, and bronze medals can be won. To solve this you first look at how many possible athletes can win the gold medal, which is eight, because all of the eight racers have a chance to win. Then you look at how many can win the silver medal, which is seven, because if one person already won the gold medal, he can not win the silver. Then you look at how many can win the bronze medal, which is 6, because if two of the racers won the other medals, then they can not win this one. After finding out these numbers, you multiply them together which will give you: 8x7x6= 336. So there are 336 different ways that the three medals can be distributed throughout the racers.
The Difference Between Rand Bin and Rand Int
The difference between Rand Bin and Rand Int is that in Rand Bin gives you a yes or no answer, and Rant int gives you a series of numbers. A situation where you would use Rand Bin is if you wanted to flip a coin fifty times, and find out how many times the coin would land on heads. A situation where you would use Rand Int is if you wanted to roll a number cube fifty times, and see which numbers come up. The difference between the two is that with rand bin you only get one number, and thats your answer, with rand int you get a list of numbers.