recognize probabilities

Purpose–

The purpose of this activity it to recognize probabilities that occur in your life and label them with correct notation.

Skills

The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course/school/field/professional life beyond school:

• writing probability notation

Knowledge

This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline:

• critically thinking about events and associate them with combinations of events.

–Task–

Step 1.

Over the next few days, think about where you use probability in your life. There are endless examples! For example, “What is the probability I will ride my bike to school?” “What is the probability my child will fall down and need an ice pack for their scraped knee?”

Remember, probabilities can also be 0 (never happening) through 1 (absolutely will happen).

Step 2. Due Thursday, Oct 10th @ 11:59pm

Reply to this discussion with answers to the following questions. Your 3 examples don’t need to relate to each other. It’s probably easier if they *don’t* relate to each other.

1. Share an example of a single event in your life.
   1. Describe this event in a sentence or two.
   2. Define your event with notation.*
   3. What was the probability of your event?**
   4. How did you determine the probability of the event? random guess? prior experience? relative frequency? something else?
2. Share an example of two disjoint outcomes of an event in your life.
   1. Describe what the two outcomes are and why they are disjoint, in a few sentences.
   2. Define your outcomes with notation.*
   3. What was the probability of each outcome?**
   4. How did you determine the probability of the outcomes? random guess? prior experience? relative frequency? something else?
3. Share an example of two independent events in your life.
   1. Describe what the two events are and why they are independent, in a few sentences.
   2. Define your events with notation.*
   3. What was the probability that both events happen at the same time? Show your work.** (See page 109 in the textbook for help.)

*For example, here’s how you can define events:

• “A = the event that I pass this class”
• “B = I study for the final exam”
• “pass = the event that I pass this class”.

**Write the probability and the event in a statement, like P(______) = _________ (where you will fill in the blanks).