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Events and Outcomes

Calculating chance | Roulette Example | Bridge Example | Events & Outcomes

The following are examples of events.

1) A coin toss.
2) Rolling a die.
3) Rolling 5 dice.
4) Drawing a card from a deck of cards.
5) Drawing 3 cards from a deck.
6) Drawing a marble from a bag of different colored marbles.
7) Spinning a spinner in a board game.
8) Tossing a coin and rolling a die.

Possible Outcomes of an Event
Possible outcomes of an event are the results which may occur from any event. (Remember, they may not occur.)

The following are possible outcomes of events.

1) A coin toss has two possible outcomes. The outcomes are "heads" and "tails".
2) Rolling a regular six-sided die has six possible outcomes. You may get a side with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 dots.
3) Drawing a card from a regular deck of 52 playing cards has 52 possible outcomes. Each of the 52 playing cards is different, so there are 52 possible outcomes for drawing a card.
4) How many different outcomes are there for the color of marble that may be drawn from a bag containing 3 red, 4 green, and 5 blue marbles? This event has 3 possible outcomes. You may get a red marble, a green marble, or a blue marble. Even if the marbles are different sizes, the outcome we are considering is the color of the marble that is drawn.
5) How many different outcomes are there for the colors of two marbles that may be drawn from a bag containing 3 red, 4 green, and 5 blue marble? This event has 6 possible outcomes: you may get two reds, two greens, two blues, a red and blue, a red and green, or a blue and green.

Note that the event tells us how to think of the outcomes. Even though there are 12 different marbles in example 4, the event tells us to count only the color of the die, so there are three outcomes. In example 6, the two dice are different, and there are 36 possible outcomes. Suppose we don't care about the color of the dice in example 6. Then we would only see 21 different outcomes: 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6, 3-3, 3-4, 3-5, 3-6, 4-4, 4-5, 4-6, 5-5, 5-6, and 6-6. (We think of a 1 and a 2, a 1-2, as being the same as a 2 and a 1.)

Probability of an Outcome
The probability of an outcome for a particular event is a number telling us how likely a particular outcome is to occur. This number is the ratio of the number of ways the outcome may occur to the number of total possible outcomes for the event. Probability is usually expressed as a fraction or decimal. Since the number of ways a certain outcome may occur is always smaller or equal to the total number of outcomes, the probability of an event is some number from 0 through 1.

Example:

Suppose there are 10 balls in a bucket numbered as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6. A single ball is randomly chosen from the bucket. What is the probability of drawing a ball numbered 1? There are 2 ways to draw a 1, since there are two balls numbered 1. The total possible number of outcomes is 10, since there are 10 balls.

The probability of drawing a 1 is the ratio 2/10 = 1/5.

Example:

Suppose there are 10 balls in a bucket numbered as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6. A single ball is randomly chosen from the bucket. What is the probability of drawing a ball with a number greater than 4? There are 3 ways this may happen, since 3 of the balls are numbered greater than 4. The total possible number of outcomes is 10, since there are 10 balls. The probability of drawing a number greater than 4 is the ratio 3/10. Since this ratio is larger than the one in the previous example, we say that this event has a greater chance of occurring than drawing a 1.

Example:

Suppose there are 10 balls in a bucket numbered as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6. A single ball is randomly chosen from the bucket. What is the probability of drawing a ball with a number greater than 6? Since none of the balls are numbered greater than 6, this can occur in 0 ways. The total possible number of outcomes is 10, since there are 10 balls. The probability of drawing a number greater than 6 is the ratio 0/10 = 0.

Example:

Suppose there are 10 balls in a bucket numbered as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6. A single ball is randomly chosen from the bucket. What is the probability of drawing a ball with a number less than 7? Since all of the balls are numbered greater than 7, this can occur in 10 ways. The total possible number of outcomes is 10, since there are 10 balls. The probability of drawing a number less than 7 is the ratio 10/10 = 1.
Note in the last two examples that a probability of 0 meant that the event would not occur, and a probability of 1 meant the event definitely would occur.

Example:

Suppose a card is drawn at random from a regular deck of 52 cards. What is the probability that the card is an ace? There are 4 different ways that the card can be an ace, since 4 of the 52 cards are aces. There are 52 different total outcomes, one for each card in the deck. The probability of drawing an ace is the ratio 4/52 = 1/13.

Example:

Suppose a regular dice is rolled. What is the probability of getting a 3 or a 6? There are a total of 6 possible outcomes. Rolling a 3 or a 6 are two of them, so the probability is the ratio of 2/6 = 1/3.

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