Probability Basics
Sample Space
The set of all possible outcomes of a statistical experiment is called the sample space and is represented by the symbol . Each outcome in a sample space is called an element or member of the sample space or simply a sample point.
A sample space must be non-empty.
Referenced by (7 direct, 96 transitive)
Direct references:
Transitive (depth 1):
- Odds
- Bernoulli Process
- Binomial Distribution
- chebyshev-fish
- chebyshevs-inequality-note
- Cumulative Distribution Function
- Geometric Distribution
- Hypergeometric Distribution
- Log Probability
- markov-inequality-fish
- Interpretation
- markovs-inequality-note
- Negative Binomial Distribution
- note-2
- p-value
- Probability Distribution
- Addition and Multiplication Rules
- proof-of-theorem-3
- remark-8
- Uniform Distribution
- A/B Test
- Absolutely Continuous Random Variable
- Chebyshev's Inequality
- Discrete Random Variable
- Entropy
- Expected Value
- Jensen's Inequality
- Markov's Inequality
- Moment Generating Function
- Normal Approximation to the Binomial
- Normal Distribution
- Poisson Approximation to the Binomial
- Poisson Distribution
- proof-of-chebyshevs-inequality
- remark-14
- Self-Information
- Standard Normal Distribution
- State Space
- theorem-16
- Uniform distribution maximizes entropy
- Variance
Transitive (depth 2):
- proof-of-law-of-large-numbers
- Identically Distributed
- Independent and Identically Distributed
- Mutual Independence
- Pairwise Independence
- Cross-Entropy
- doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy-intuition
- Entropy Rate
- Gibbs' Inequality
- Chain rule for joint entropy
- joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- KL Divergence
- Noiseless channel transmitting discrete symbols
- note-25
- note-8
- proof-of-concavity-of-entropy
- proof-of-doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy
- proof-of-joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- proof-of-uniform-distribution-maximizes-entropy
- theorem-12
- Weak Asymptotic Equipartition Property
- proof-of-weak-asymptotic-equipartition-property
- proof-of-gibbs-inequality
- proof-of-log-sum-inequality
- note-7
- Moment Generating Function of a Sum
- Sum of Independent Normal Random Variables
- note-5
- Sum of Independent Poisson Random Variables
- Conditional Probability Distribution
- Product Distribution
- note-15
- note-3
- concavity-of-entropy-intuition
- Confidence Interval for a Mean, Known Variance
- Confidence Interval for a Mean, Unknown Variance
- Standard Deviation
- variance-interpretation
Transitive (depth 3):
- proof-of-joint-is-marginal-times-conditional
- Model Training
- Strong Asymptotic Equipartition Property (Shannon--McMillan--Breiman)
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-conditional-mutual-information
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-conditional-relative-entropy
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-mutual-information
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-relative-entropy
- Law of Large Numbers
- proof-of-chain-rule-for-entropy
- proof-of-mutual-information-and-entropy
- proof-of-theorem-54
- remark-32
- Multiplication Rule for Distributions
- Mutual Information
- theorem-7
- Central Limit Theorem
Transitive (depth 4):
For example, the sample space representing the outcomes of the rolls of a standard six-sided die is
An event is a subset of a sample space. For example, we can say the event that the roll of a die is odd is the event that the roll of a die is even is , and that the event that the roll of a die is less than or equal to 4 is
Referenced by (2 direct, 2 transitive)
Direct references:
A lot of the rest of basic probability is just set theory from there:
- The event that the roll of a die is not less than or equal to 4 is the complement of , written as .
- The event that the roll is both even and less than or equal to 4 is the intersection of and , written as
- The event that the roll is either even or less than or equal to 4 is the union of and , written as
We can also have continuous sample spaces. For example, if we were to randomly choose a number between 0 and 1 inclusive, the sample space would be , and the event that the outcome is a number whose decimal digits are only 2s would be
Probability
Note: This applies to sample spaces of discrete events and is a bit hand wavy.
We can assign a probability or weight to each sample point in a sample space by giving it a value ranging from 0 to 1. Events that are more likely to occur have a probability closer to 1, and events that are less likely to occur have a probability closer to 0. We give a probability to all sample points in a sample space such that the sum of the probabilities of all sample points in a sample space is 1.
Then, the probability of an event is the sum of the probabilities of all sample points in Therefore,
Referenced by (26 direct, 67 transitive)
Direct references:
- remark-8
- Some Continuous Probability Distributions
- Uniform Distribution
- Bernoulli Process
- Binomial Distribution
- Hypergeometric Distribution
- Geometric Distribution
- Negative Binomial Distribution
- Hypothesis Testing
- p-value
- Limit Theorems
- markovs-inequality-note
- markov-inequality-fish
- Interpretation
- chebyshevs-inequality-note
- chebyshev-fish
- note-2
- proof-of-theorem-3
- Probability Basics
- Odds
- Log Probability
- Addition and Multiplication Rules
- Random Variables and Probability Distributions
- Probability Distribution
- Cumulative Distribution Function
- Slot Machines
Transitive (depth 1):
- Normal Approximation to the Binomial
- Poisson Approximation to the Binomial
- Identically Distributed
- Independent and Identically Distributed
- Mutual Independence
- Pairwise Independence
- note-7
- Self-Information
- note-5
- Conditional Probability Distribution
- Expected Value
- Poisson Distribution
- Product Distribution
- Variance
Transitive (depth 2):
- proof-of-joint-is-marginal-times-conditional
- Entropy
- Entropy Rate
- proof-of-markovs-inequality
- proof-of-weak-asymptotic-equipartition-property
- Law of Large Numbers
- theorem-12
- Sum of Independent Poisson Random Variables
- Multiplication Rule for Distributions
- Mutual Information
- theorem-7
- note-15
- theorem-16
- A/B Test
- Confidence Interval for a Mean, Known Variance
- Confidence Interval for a Mean, Unknown Variance
- Normal Distribution
- proof-of-chebyshevs-inequality
- proof-of-law-of-large-numbers
- Standard Deviation
- Standard Normal Distribution
- variance-interpretation
Transitive (depth 3):
- Cross-Entropy
- doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy-intuition
- Gibbs' Inequality
- Chain rule for joint entropy
- joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- KL Divergence
- Noiseless channel transmitting discrete symbols
- note-25
- note-8
- proof-of-concavity-of-entropy
- proof-of-doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy
- proof-of-joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- proof-of-uniform-distribution-maximizes-entropy
- remark-14
- Uniform distribution maximizes entropy
- Weak Asymptotic Equipartition Property
- Strong Asymptotic Equipartition Property (Shannon--McMillan--Breiman)
- proof-of-chain-rule-for-relative-entropy
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-mutual-information
- Sum of Independent Normal Random Variables
- Central Limit Theorem
- Chebyshev's Inequality
Transitive (depth 4):
The odds of an event occurring are defined as
that is, the probability occurs divided by the probability of the complement of (i.e., the probability that does not occur.)
Referenced by (4 direct)
Direct references:
A log probability is just a logarithm of a probability.
Referenced by (2 direct, 33 transitive)
Direct references:
Transitive (depth 1):
Transitive (depth 2):
- Cross-Entropy
- doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy-intuition
- Entropy Rate
- Gibbs' Inequality
- Chain rule for joint entropy
- joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- KL Divergence
- Noiseless channel transmitting discrete symbols
- note-25
- note-8
- proof-of-concavity-of-entropy
- proof-of-doubly-stochastic-maps-increase-entropy
- proof-of-joint-entropy-is-less-than-or-equal-to-entropy-of-parts
- proof-of-uniform-distribution-maximizes-entropy
- remark-14
- theorem-12
- Uniform distribution maximizes entropy
- Weak Asymptotic Equipartition Property
Transitive (depth 3):
- Model Training
- Strong Asymptotic Equipartition Property (Shannon--McMillan--Breiman)
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-conditional-mutual-information
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-conditional-relative-entropy
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-mutual-information
- proof-of-nonnegativity-of-relative-entropy
- proof-of-chain-rule-for-entropy
- proof-of-mutual-information-and-entropy
- proof-of-theorem-54
- remark-32
- concavity-of-entropy-intuition
Using log probability has some advantages:
- It converts multiplication of probabilities into addition, which are faster to compute.
- It improves @numerical stability when very small probabilities are involved.
- It eliminates @exponentiation.
- Logarithms are concave which is useful for @optimization.
Probability Rules
The events and are said to be independent if
The probability of or is the probability of plus the probability of minus the probability of and occurring together:
If and are mutually exclusive events,
We have to subtract the overlap between and to avoid double counting.
Similarly
The probability of and is the probability of times the probability of given , or equivalently, the probability of times the probability of given .
If and are independent, this reduces to .
From this, we can give the formula for conditional probability. The probability of given is
That is to say, the probability of occurring given has occurred is the portion of times occurs that also occurs.
If , then and are independent events, and
Referenced by (2 direct, 2 transitive)
Direct references:
Transitive (depth 1):
Let and be events. and are said to be conditionally independent given if and only if and
Equivalently, conditional independence may be stated as where is the joint probability of and given