The theory of probability was originated by two famous mathematicians Blaise and Pierre de Fermat in 1654. They made a study of the gambling problems to formulate the fundamental principles of probability theory. The theory of probability was developed rapidly in the 18th century. The basic mathematical techniques of probability were introduced by Laplace, Chebyshev, Markov, Von Mises and Kolmogorov. They made an important contribution to the theory of probability. The concept of probability is extremely important, as it has very extensive applications in the development of all physical sciences. Starting with games of chance ‘probability’ today has become one of the fundamental tools of statistics. The word ‘probability’ or ‘chance’ is very commonly used in day to day conversation. We come across statements like “probably he is right”, “it is possible to catch the bus sin time today”, “the chances of team A and B winning the cricket match are equal, “it is likely that he may attend the party tomorrow”. All these terms – probably, possible chance, likely, etc. convey the same meaning. That is, the event is not certain to take place or in other words, there is uncertainty about happening of the event in question. When we make statement like as above, we are expressing an outcome about which we are not certain, but because of past information we have some degree of confidence in the validity of the statement. The mathematical theory of probability provides a mean of evaluating the uncertainty, likelihood, or chance of happening of outcomes resulting from a statistical experiment. The mathematical measure of uncertainty or likelihood, or chance is called probability.
In other words, Probability (or likelihood) is a measure or estimation of how likely it is that something will happen or that a statement is true. Probabilities are given a value between 0 (0% chance or will not happen) and 1 (100% chance or will happen). The higher the degree of probability, the more likely the event is to happen, or, in a longer series of samples, the greater the number of times such event is expected to happen.
These concepts have been given an axiomatic mathematical derivation in probability theory (see probability axioms), which is used widely in such areas of study as mathematics, statistics, finance, gambling, science, artificial intelligence / machine learning and philosophy to, for example, draw inferences about the expected frequency of events. Probability theory is also used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems.
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