EXERCISE 25A
(i) A coin is tossed. What are all possible outcomes?
Answers
Answer:
The two outcomes of the toss of a coin are heads or tails. For any individual toss of the coin, the outcome will be either heads or tails. The two outcomes (heads or tails) are therefore mututally exclusive; if the coin comes up heads on a single toss, it cannot come up tails on the same toss.
Answer:
Probability is a field of mathematics that deals with calculating the likelihood of occurrence of a specific event.
The likelihood of an event is expressed as a number between zero (the event will never occur) and one (the event is certain). For example, the probability of an outcome of heads on the toss of a fair coin is ½ or 0.5. The probability of an event can also be expressed as a percentage (e.g., an outcome of heads on the toss of a fair coin is 50% likely) or as odds (e.g., the odds of heads on the toss of a fair coin is 1:1).
A single toss of a coin is an event (also called a trial) that is not connected to or influenced by other events. When a coin is tossed twice, the coin has no memory of whether it came up heads or tails the first time, so the second toss of the coin is independent. The probability of heads on the first toss is 50%, just as it is on all subsequent tosses of the coin.
The two outcomes of the toss of a coin are heads or tails. For any individual toss of the coin, the outcome will be either heads or tails. The two outcomes (heads or tails) are therefore mututally exclusive; if the coin comes up heads on a single toss, it cannot come up tails on the same toss.
There are two useful rules for calculating the probability of events more complicated than a single coin toss.
The first is the Product Rule. This states that the probability of the occurrence of two independent events is the product of their individual probabilities. The probability of getting two heads on two coin tosses is 0.5 x 0.5 or 0.25.