Talk:Probability

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Probability article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 12 months

Statistics Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

Mathematics Top‑priority

	Mathematics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-priority on the project's priority scale.

Philosophy: Science Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Philosophy of science

‹See TfM›

Physics Mid‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

Archive 1

This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by when more than 3 sections are present.

Odds

The person who wrote up odds as currently displayed on the page got it wrong. A 2:1 event is not an event with probability 2/3; it is a 1/3 probability event. The formula a/(a+b) needs to be replaced with b/(a+b) and is probably best illustrated with a reference to gambling.

Error in image illustrating Exclusive-or-not events

The image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Independent_and_Non-independent_Probability_Events.jpg displayed alongside discussion of Mutually Exclusive and Independent events is mislabelled and misnamed. The lower portion of the image shows two outcomes that overlap and is correctly labelled as showing non-mutually-exclusive events. However, above it, a pair of mutually-exclusive events are labelled as independent, which they are not (unless one of them has probability zero), since it shows p(A and B) = 0 (they are mutually exclusive) and, for this to be p(A).p(B), one of p(A) and p(B) must be zero. So the diagram is mis-labelled.

Fixing the upper half's label would indeed illustrate the difference between mutually exclusive and the alternative, but its name claims it illustrates independence and its alternative. The latter would be better described by an image showing the available space Ω as a rectangle, divided by two lines parallel to edges of the rectangle; if the part to the left of the vertical line is labelled A and the part above the horizontal one B (for example), the diagram would nicely show independence since the areas within it would be in the right proportion. The proportion of A's area that also lies within B's area would indeed by the same as the proportion of Ω's area that lies within B's; and conversely. -- Eddy. 2A02:FE1:7C:4D00:1A31:BFFF:FE27:3497 (talk) 19:52, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Theory of errors

I submit that the memoir De erroribus (1823) by C F Gauss should be mentioned. Gauss derives the error functgon connected with his name, from only three assumptions.

(C Lomnitz, Mexico City) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4070:4d1c:4d1c:f247:6a9d:ab30:6e8b (talk • contribs) 17:11, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please put new messages at the bottom and sign all your talk page messages with four tildes (~~~~) — See Help:Using talk pages. Thanks. - DVdm (talk) 17:51, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Branches of probability

I feel that this page would be clearer if it contained a distinction between the branches of probability termed aleatory (of future events that haven't unfolded yet) and epistemic (resulting from insufficient knowledge). While the mathematics is the same, the implications are quite different.TonyP (talk) 09:35, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]