Manchester, United Kingdom

Probability

Language: English Studies in English
University website: www.manchester.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Probability
Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. See glossary of probability and statistics. Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, where, loosely speaking, 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates certainty. The higher the probability of an event, the more likely it is that the event will occur. A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin. Since the coin is fair, the two outcomes ("heads" and "tails") are both equally probable; the probability of "heads" equals the probability of "tails"; and since no other outcomes are possible, the probability of either "heads" or "tails" is 1/2 (which could also be written as 0.5 or 50%).
Probability
In applying dynamical principles to the motion of immense numbers of atoms, the limitation of our faculties forces us to abandon the attempt to express the exact history of each atom, and to be content with estimating the average condition of a group of atoms large enough to be visible. This method... which I may call the statistical method, and which in the present state of our knowledge is the only available method of studying the properties of real bodies, involves an abandonment of strict dynamical principles, and an adoption of the mathematical methods belonging to the theory of probability. … If the actual history of Science had been different, and if the scientific doctrines most familiar to us had been those which must be expressed in this way, it is possible that we might have considered the existence of a certain kind of contingency a self evident truth, and treated the doctrine of philosophical necessity as a mere sophism.
James Clerk Maxwell, "Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics," The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1890) Vol. 2.
Probability
Probability is the very guide of life.
Cicero, De Natura, 5, 12; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 634. Quoted by Bishop Butler. Also used by Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I, Chapter VIII., and, Book II, Chapter VII. Found in John Locke, Essays, Book IV, Chapter XV. Also in Hobbes' Leviathan.
Probability
R. A. Fisher, J. Neyman, R. von Mises, W. Feller, and L. J. Savage denied vehemently that probability theory is an extension of logic, and accused Laplace and Jeffreys of committing metaphysical nonsense for thinking that it is.
E. T. Jaynes; G. Larry Bretthorst (10 April 2003). Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-521-59271-0. 
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