Types of Events in Probability

What is an Event in Probability?

An event in probability is a set of outcomes of a random experiment or in other words, an event in probability is the subset of the sample space.

What are the Different Types of Events in Probability?

The different types of events in probability are as follows:

• Impossible and Sure Events
• Simple Event and Compound Event
• Dependent and Independent Events
• Mutually Exclusive Events
• Exhaustive Events
• Equally Likely Events

What is a Simple Event?

A simple event is an event that consists of a single outcome. For example, if a coin is tossed, the event of getting a head is a simple event.

What is a Compound Event?

A compound event is an event that consists of two or more outcomes. For example, when rolling two dice and getting a sum of 7 which can be achieved either by (1, 6), (2, 5), (3, 4), (4, 3), (3, 4), (5, 2), or (6, 1).

What is a Complementary Event?

Two disjoint events are called complementary events if their union is a complete sample space. For example, in a coin toss one event is getting a head and its complementary event is getting tails.

What is the Difference Between Mutually Exclusive Events and Independent Events?

Those events which can’t occur simultaneously are called Mutually exclusive events whereas independent events are those events where the occurrence of one event doesn’t affect the probability of the other event.

What is the Difference Between Conditional Probability and Unconditional Probability?

When the probability of an event is calculated without any prior knowledge of any event associated with it, then that probability is called unconditional probability whereas conditional probability is the probability of an event occurring given that another event has already occurred.

Whenever an experiment is performed whose outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty, it is called a random experiment. In such cases, we can only measure which of the events is more likely or less likely to happen. This likelihood of events is measured in terms of probability and events refer to the possible outcomes of an experiment. Also, events can be classified into various different types based on different properties and probability values of events. 

In this article, we’ll explore the various types of events in probability, including simple events, compound events, mutually exclusive events, independent events, and dependent events. So, let’s dive into the world of different types of events.