Combinatorics
Probability & Statistics
© The scientific sentence. 2010
|
Probability & statistics
1. Bernoulli trials
A Bernoulli process is a sequence of repeated trials
of an experiment in which:
- Each trial has two possible outcomes E and E (success or failure)
- The trials are indepenedent
- The probability p(E) of an event E is the same for each trial
Let's recall that a trial is independent means that it does
not depend on any other trials; that is the outcome of one trial
does not influence the outcome of any other trial.
If p(E) is the probability of succes; then, according to the complement
rule q = 1 - p(E) is the probability of failure.
The main purpose of the Bernoulli trials is to determine
the probability that an event E occurs exactly "r" times among
a series of "n" trials of a random experiment.
We can solve a problem by two approches:
1. Using a stochastic diagram
The probabilty to have "success" twice among three trials
is ppq or p2q. it occurs three times. We ad them
to have the total probability, that gives 3 p2q
(aal of the branches of the tree are mutually exclusive).
As we have seen the number three in 3 p2q is
a numer of combinations, that is C(2,3)=3. Finally, the
probability to have success twice is C(3,2)p2q.
2. Using the Binomial formula
1 = (p+q)N = = ∑ C(n,N)pnqN-n [n: 0 → N]
in which each term of the series represents the probability to
get "success" "n" times among N trials.
The collection {p(m,n), m = 1,2,3 ... n} forms a probability
distribution called the binomial distribution.
|
|
|