Chance is also known as probability, which is represented numerically. Probability as a number lies between 0 and 1 . A probability of 0 means that the event will not happen. Show For example, if the chance of being involved in a road traffic accident was 0 this would mean it would never happen. You would be perfectly safe. A probability of 1 means that the event will happen. If the probability of a road traffic accident was 1 there would be nothing you could do to stop it. It will happen. In practice probabilities associated with everyday life events lie somewhere between 0 and 1. A probability of 0.1 means there is a 1 in 10 chance of an event happening, or a 10% chance that an event will happen. Weather forecasters might tell us that there is a 70% chance of rain. A probabilistic science project from Science Buddies Key Concepts Introduction Background The probability of a certain event occurring depends on how many possible outcomes the event has. If an event has only one possible outcome, the probability for this outcome is always 1 (or 100 percent). If there is more than one possible outcome, however, this changes. A simple example is the coin toss. If you toss a coin, there are two possible outcomes (heads or tails). As long as the coin was not manipulated, the theoretical probabilities of both outcomes are the same–they are equally probable. The sum of all possible outcomes is always 1 (or 100 percent) because it is certain that one of the possible outcomes will happen. This means that for the coin toss, the theoretical probability of either heads or tails is 0.5 (or 50 percent). It gets more complicated with a six-sided die. In this case if you roll the die, there are 6 possible outcomes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6). Can you figure out what the theoretical probability for each number is? It is 1/6 or 0.17 (or 17 percent). In this activity, you will put your probability calculations to the test. The interesting part about probabilities is that knowing the theoretical likelihood of a certain outcome doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about the experimental probabilities when you actually try it out (except when the probability is 0 or 1). For example, outcomes with very low theoretical probabilities do actually occur in reality, although they are very unlikely. So how do your theoretical probabilities match your experimental results? You will find out by tossing a coin and rolling a die in this activity. Materials
Observations and Results You likely observed a similar phenomenon when rolling the dice. Although the theoretical probability for each number is 1 out of 6 (1/6 or 0.17), in reality your experimental probabilities probably looked different. Instead of rolling each number 17 percent out of your total rolls, you might have rolled them more or less often. If you continued tossing the coin or rolling the dice, you probably have observed that the more trials (coin tosses or dice rolls) you did, the closer the experimental probability was to the theoretical probability. Overall these results mean that even if you know the theoretical probabilities for each possible outcome, you can never know what the actual experimental probabilities will be if there is more than one outcome for an event. After all, a theoretical probability is just predicting how the chances are that an event or a specific outcome occurs—it won’t tell you what will actually happen! More to Explore This activity brought to you in partnership with Science Buddies ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)What is a number from 0 to 1 that describes how likely an event?Chance is also known as probability, which is represented numerically. Probability as a number lies between 0 and 1 . A probability of 0 means that the event will not happen.
What is probability quizlet a value between 0 and 1?The probability of an event will be a value in the range of 0 to 1. Anything between 0 and 1 reflects the uncertainty of the event occurring. The probability is a numeric value from 0 to 1 that represents the chance, likelihood, or possibility that a particular event will occur.
What is the ratio of the number of ways a specific event can occur to the total number of possible outcomes?The odds are the ratios that compare the number of ways the event can occur with the number of ways the event cannot occurr. The odds in favor - the ratio of the number of ways that an outcome can occur compared to how many ways it cannot occur.
What is the chance that a certain event will occur?Answer: The likelihood that a particular event will occur is called probability. Probability can be defined as the ratio of the number of favorable outcomes to the total number of outcomes of an event.
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