
© 2003 by CRC Press LLC
Conditional Probability and Bayes’ Rule
The probability of an event A, given that an event B has occurred, is called the conditional probability
and is denoted
p(A/B). Further,
Bayes’ rule permits a calculation of a posteriori probability from given a priori probabilities and is
stated below:
If A
1
, A
2
, K, A
n
are n mutually exclusive events, and p(A
1
) + p(A
2
) + K + p(A
n
) = 1, and B is any
event such that
p(B) is not 0, then the conditional probability p(A
i
/B) for any one of the events A
i
, given
that B has occurred
, is
Example
Among five different laboratory tests for detecting a certain disease, one is effective with probability 0.75,
whereas each of the others is effective with probability 0.40. A medical student, unfamiliar with the
advantage of the best test, selects one of them and is successful in detecting the disease in a patient. What
is the probability that the most effective test was used?
Let B denote (the event) of detecting the disease, A
1
the selection of the best test, and A
2
the selection
of one of the other four tests; thus,
p(A
1
) = 1/5, p(A
2
) = 4/5, p(B/A
1
) = 0.75, and p(B/A
2
) = 0.40. Therefore,
Note that the a priori probability is 0.20; the outcome raises this probability to 0.319.
Binomial Distribution
In an experiment consisting of n independent trials in which an event has probability p in a single trial,
the probability
P
X
of obtaining X successes is given by
where
The probability of between a and b successes (both a and b included) is P
a
+ P
a + 1
+ L + P
b
, so if a =
0 and
b = n, this sum is
Mean of Binomially Distributed Variable
The mean number of successes in n independent trials is m = np, with standard deviation
pA B⁄()
pA B∩()
pB()
----------------------=
A
i
B⁄()
PA
i
()pB A
i
⁄()
pA
1
()pB A
1
⁄()pA
2
()pB A
2
⁄()L pA
n
()pB A
n
⁄()+ ++
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------=
A
1
B⁄()
1
5
--
0.75()
1
5
--
0.75()
4
5
--
0.40()+
------------------------------------------- 0.319= =
P
X
C
nX,()
p
X
q
nX–()
=
q 1 p–() and C
nX,()
n!
X! nX–()!
-------------------------= =
C
nX,()
p
X
q
nX–()
X 0=
n
∑
q
n
C
n 1,()
q
n 1–
pC
n 2,()
q
n 2–
p
2
L p
n
+ + ++ qp+()
n
1= = =
σ
npq.=