cover image

Probability distribution

Mathematical function for the probability a given outcome occurs in an experiment / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Probability distribution?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment.[1][2] It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events (subsets of the sample space).[3]

For instance, if X is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of X would take the value 0.5 (1 in 2 or 1/2) for X = heads, and 0.5 for X = tails (assuming that the coin is fair). More commonly, probability distributions are used to compare the relative occurrence of many different random values.

Probability distributions can be defined in different ways and for discrete or for continuous variables. Distributions with special properties or for especially important applications are given specific names.

Oops something went wrong: