• Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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    9 hours ago

    If you flip a coin, the result has two possibilities: It may show either the obverse side (head) or the reverse (tails). These possibilities have equal probability (“50:50”), i.e. in 100 times the coin is flipped, statistically both sides are shown 50 times.

    • zout@fedia.io
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      7 hours ago

      But, it is plausible you didn’t flip 50:50 since the 50:50 is on average.

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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        7 hours ago

        Exactly, 50:50 is statistically the most likely scenario (7.96%), while e.g. 51:49 being only slightly less likely (7.80 %). A strongly biased distribution as e.g. 60:40 only has a small probability of 1 %, but is not impossible.

      • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        A common dice has 6 possible outcomes. Unless it’s a special D6, it’s impossible to get a zero or some other value outside the usual range of 1-6.

        Normally, each side has a probability of 1/6. If it’s a loaded dice, one value will have a higher probability, while the other sides will have a lower probability.

        Let’s say you have two dice, you roll them, and hope to get 6 on both of them. It’s possible to get that on the first try, but it’s much more plausible that you have to roll them many times before that happens.

      • Blemgo@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Possibilities are all possible outcomes of a certain scenario. With the example of a coin toss, it’s heads or tails. However, these are dependent on your definition of what you want to observe. For example, at a dice roll, you could define the possibilities as:

        • any number less than 5 is rolled
        • a 5 is rolled
        • a 6 is rolled

        Probabilities are attached to possibilities. They define how likely an outcome is. For example, in an ideal coin toss heads and tails have a probabilitiy of 0.5 (or 50%) each.

        With my 2nd example, the probabilities would be:

        • any number less than 5 is rolled: 4/6 (or 2/3 or 0.666… or 66.666…%)
        • a 5 is rolled (1/6 or 0.1666… or 16.666…%)
        • a 6 is rolled (1/6 or 0.1666… or 16.666…%)

        All probabilities must add up to 1.0 (or 100%), otherwise your possibilities overlap, which is generally not something you want.


        Plausibility is a bit more tricky, as it also depends on your definition, namely a cutoff point. You could see the cutoff point as a limit of how much you want to risk. I’ll only examine the example for the coin toss for that. Say you will toss a coin 100 times. This would mean there are 2100 possibilities, but we will examine only 2 for this matter:

        • you will get 100 times tails
        • you will get as many tails as heads

        Let’s say the cutoff point is 0.01, i.e. 1%. This would make the first possibility improbable, as 1/(2100) is far lower than 0.01. The second possibility is 0.5, which is greater than 0.01, and therefore probable.