Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Limits of probability

Probability is the art (science as some may want to argue) of prediction. it was born out of the requirement of french king who kept on losing in gambling.

The biggest limitation probabilty has is the absence of any hint about the place or position of occurence of the event.

What I mean by this is suppose an unbiased coin is tossed thrice, the probability of getting a head( or a tail) every time is one-half. The problem is that we have no idea when will the coin show head and when it will show tail!!!

1 comment:

Madhuri said...

First thing is probability is not an art! Its a science! (Its a part of Statistics). When u say that a coin is unbiased it means that head and tail have equal chance of occurrence. Hence the probability is half. It doesn't mean that at the first throw if u got head then at the next throw u will get tail. Calculation of probability is meaningful in case of uncertain events. In case if u know in advance whats going to happen then its a certain event. In such cases the probability is 1. Tossing of a coin is not a certain case.
What u have written is definitely not a limitation of probability because whenever uncertainty is there, then only one looks for its probability. (e.g. Who is going to win today's match?)