Example 1.
A toxin molecule in a cell has a certain chance each minute to leave the cell.
Section Tuesday, Jan 13
This is an outline of the topics we covered in class. These notes are not a substitute for your own note-taking. I highly recommend that you take your own notes during class. If you ever miss a class for any reason, reach out to another student in class to get a copy of their notes.
Subsection Sec 1.1: Sets
In prior math courses, you mostly asked deterministic questions. Now, we need new tools to model randomness.
Example 2.
A patient takes a diagnostic test for a disease and wants to know the chance that they have the disease based on the test result.
Definition 3.
The sample space, often denoted \(\Omega\text{,}\) is the set of all possible results of an experiment. A single result is called an outcome, while a collection of results is called an event.
Example 4.
An experiment consists of rolling a standard 6-sided die (D6). The sample space is \(\Omega = \{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6\}\text{.}\) One possible event is \(A = \{2, 4, 6\}\text{,}\) i.e., the event that the result of the roll is even.
Note: we’ll use notation like D6 to indicate a 6-sided die with faces 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Similarly, for example, D4 will indicate a 4-sided die with faces 1, 2, 3, 4.
Definition 5.
The symbol \(\subset\) means "is a subset of", as in \(A \subset \Omega\text{.}\) This means that every element of the set \(A\) is also an element of the set \(\Omega\text{.}\)
Definition 6.
Consider sets \(A\) and \(B\text{,}\) each contained inside \(\Omega\text{.}\) We can combine sets in a variety of ways:
- Union
- The union of \(A\) and \(B\) is the set \(A \cup B = \{x \mid x \in A \text{ or } x \in B\}\text{.}\)
- Intersection
- The intersection of \(A\) and \(B\) is the set \(A \cap B = \{x \mid x \in A \text{ and } x \in B\}\text{.}\)
- Difference
- The set difference \(A-B\) is the set \(A - B = \{x \mid x \in A \text{ and } x \notin B\}\text{.}\)
- Complement
- Empty Set
- The empty set, usually written \(\emptyset\) or \(\{\}\text{,}\) is the set which contains no elements.
It’s useful sometimes to draw pictures called Venn diagrams representing set interactions.
Subsection Sec 1.2: Probability
Next, we want to start assigning probabilities to each individual outcome so we can then find the probabilities of events.
Example 11.
An experiment consists of rolling a D6. The sample space is \(\Omega = \{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6\}\text{.}\) We might assign probabilities as follows:
| \(x\) | \(\Pr(x)\) |
| 1 | \(1/6\) |
| 2 | \(1/6\) |
| 3 | \(1/6\) |
| 4 | \(1/6\) |
| 5 | \(1/6\) |
| 6 | \(1/6\) |
Note that we don’t have to assign the same probability to each outcome. If we do, we call this distribution uniform. If we have some event, such as \(A = \{2, 4, 6\}\text{,}\) then we calculate the probability of the event by adding together the probabilities of the outcomes that make up the event:
\begin{gather*}
\Pr(A) = \Pr(2) + \Pr(4) + \Pr(6) = \frac{1}{6} + \frac{1}{6} + \frac{1}{6} = \frac{3}{6} = \frac{1}{2}
\end{gather*}
Note that this is the same result that we would get if we counted the total number of outcomes in \(A\) and divided by the total number of outcomes in \(\Omega\text{.}\)
Definition 13.
Given a finite set \(A\text{,}\) the cardinality of \(A\text{,}\) written \(|A|\text{,}\) is the number of elements in \(A\text{.}\)
Fact 14.
If \(\Omega\) is a finite probability space with the uniform distribution and \(A \subset \Omega\) is an event, then:
\begin{gather*}
\Pr(A) = \frac{|A|}{|\Omega|}
\end{gather*}
Example 15.
Suppose we have a weighted die that’s much more likely to come up 6 than any other outcome.
| \(x\) | \(\Pr(x)\) |
| 1 | 0.1 |
| 2 | 0.1 |
| 3 | 0.1 |
| 4 | 0.2 |
| 5 | 0.1 |
| 6 | 0.4 |
With this distribution, if \(A = \{2, 4, 6\}\text{,}\) then:
\begin{gather*}
\Pr(A) = 0.1 + 0.2 + 0.4 = 0.7 \neq \frac{3}{6}.
\end{gather*}
Example 17.
Pick a number from 1 to 10. What is the probability of picking 3?
Some considerations:
-
Are we using the uniform distribution?
-
What even is the sample space here? Do we need to pick only integers, or is \(\pi\) an outcome here?
-
What would "uniform" mean if the sample space was infinite?
Definition 18.
A probability distribution on a sample space \(\Omega\) assigns probabilities to every event, satisfying the following conditions:
-
\(\Pr(\Omega) = 1\text{.}\)
Example 19.
Suppose we flip a coin until we see heads. The sample space is \(\Omega = \{H, TH, TTH, TTTH, \dotsc\}\text{.}\) What would "uniform" mean here? Is there any way we could assign the same probability to each individual outcome here?
Instead of "uniform", what if we want to treat the coin as a fair coin? Then what would the distribution be?
| \(x\) | # flips | \(\Pr(x)\) |
| \(H\) | 1 | \(1/2\) |
| \(TH\) | 2 | \(1/4\) |
| \(TTH\) | 3 | \(1/8\) |
| \(TTTH\) | 4 | \(1/16\) |
| \(\vdots\) | \(\vdots\) | |
| \(T\dotsm TH\) | \(n\) | \(1/2^n\) |
| \(\vdots\) | \(\vdots\) |
Example 21.
One last (very useful!) observation. Recall: If \(A\cap B = \emptyset\text{,}\) then \(\Pr(A\cup B) = \Pr(A) + \Pr(B)\text{.}\)
For any event \(A\text{,}\) \(A\cap A^c = \emptyset\) and \(A \cup A^c = \Omega\text{.}\) So:
\begin{gather*}
1 = \Pr(\underbrace{A \cup A^c}_{\Omega}) = \Pr(A) + \Pr(A^c).
\end{gather*}
We can rewrite this in two useful ways:
\begin{align*}
\Pr(A) \amp = 1 - \Pr(A^c) \\
\Pr(A^c) \amp = 1 - \Pr(A)
\end{align*}
