Probabilistic World

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact

Probability: What Is It, Really?

Posted on April 8, 2016 Written by The Cthaeh 12 Comments

A ruler, a pen and a calculator on a notebook.Throughout history, we have come up with better and more accurate ways to measure physical quantities like time, length, mass, and temperature. This has been crucial for our scientific and technological development.

Each of these quantities has a precise definition and is informative about some aspect of the current state of the physical world. For example, the mass of an object can tell you how much work is necessary to lift it at a certain height. The outside air temperature determines the kind of clothes you would wear when you go out. And so on.

Probabilities are also quantities that measure something — they have a very precise and unambiguous mathematical definition. But still, they don’t relate to things in the physical world as straightforwardly and as intuitively as measures like mass and length.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Probability Theory Tagged With: Coin flip, History, Law of large numbers, Probability axioms, Sample space

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2

Sign Up For The Probabilistic World Newsletter

Enter your email below to receive updates and be notified about new posts.

Follow Probabilistic World

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Recent posts

  • Alternative Variance Formulas and Their Derivation
  • The Sum Operator: Everything You Need to Know
  • Natural Numbers and Arithmetic: Intuition
  • The Birthday Problem: Python Simulation
  • The Birthday Problem: Analytic Solution

Probabilistic World