Probability of event intersections

Tan Do

Vietnamese-German University

Lecture 4

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 Content

In this lecture

Probability of event intersections

Probability tree

Independent events

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 Probabilities of event intersections

General multiplication law

Recall the formula of conditional probability:

P (B ∩ A)
P (B|A) = .
P (A)

It follows that

P (A ∩ B) = P (A) ∗ P (B|A).

Generally, we have
P (A1 ∩A2 ∩. . .∩An ) = P (A1 )∗P (A2 |A1 )∗P (A3 |A1 ∩A2 )∗. . .∗P (An |A1 ∩. . .∩An−1 ),

where A , A , . . . , A are events.

1 2 n

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 Probabilities of event intersections

Example Consider 2 cards drawn at random without replacement from a pack of

cards.
Let A be the event that the rst card drawn is from the heart suit.
Let B be the event that the second card drawn is from the heart suit.
Then A ∩ B represents the event that both cards drawn are from the heart suit.
What is P (A ∩ B)?

One way to calculate this is to count the number of elements in A ∩ B :

A ∩ B = {(A♡, 2♡), (A♡, 3♡), . . . , (A♡, K♡),

(2♡, A♡), (2♡, 3♡), . . . , (2♡, K♡),

(K♡, A♡), (K♡, 2♡), . . . , (K♡, Q♡)}.

So A ∩ B consists of 13 × 12 = 156 outcomes. We showed before that the
number of way to draw 2 cards without replacement is 2652. Consequently,
156 3
P (A ∩ B) = = .
2562 51
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 Probabilities of event intersections

A more convenient way of calculating P (A ∩ B) is to use

P (A ∩ B) = P (A)P (B|A).

When the rst card is drawn, there are 13 heart cards out of 52 cards:

13 1
P (A) = = .
52 4

When the second card is drawn, there are 12 heart cards out of 51 cards:

12
P (B|A) = .
51

So
1 12 3
P (A ∩ B) = P (A)P (B|A) = × =
4 51 51
as before.
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 Probabilities of event intersections

Independent events

Two events A and B are called independent if

P (B|A) = P (B).

Intuitively, this means that whether A occurs or not, it does not aect the

probability of B.

Consequently, if A and B are independent, then

P (A ∩ B) = P (A) ∗ P (B|A) = P (A) ∗ P (B)

and
P (A ∩ B) P (A) ∗ P (B)
P (A|B) = = = P (A).
P (B) P (B)
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 Probabilities of event intersections

From a practical standpoint, 2 events are independent when they are

unrelated to each other.

Example Suppose a person is chosen from a large group of people.

Let A be the event that the person is over 1.6 meter tall.

Let B be the event that the person weighs more than 40 kg.

Then intuitively, A and B are related to each other.

On the other hand, let C be the event that the person wins a lottery.

Then intuitively, A and C are unrelated.

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 Probabilities of event intersections

Example Consider the problem of drawing 2 cards at random with replacement

from a pack of cards.
Let A be the event that the rst card is from the heart suit and B the second
card from the heart suit. Then what is A ∩ B ?

One way to calculate this is to count the number of outcomes in A ∩ B :

A ∩ B = {(A♡, A♡), (A♡, 2♡), (A♡, 3♡), . . . , (A♡, K♡),

(2♡, A♡), (2♡, 2♡), (2♡, 3♡), . . . , (2♡, K♡),

(K♡, A♡), (K♡, 2♡), . . . , (K♡, Q♡), (K♡, K♡)}.

So A ∩ B consists of 13 × 13 = 169 outcomes.

The number of ways to draw 2 cards is 52 × 52 = 2704. So

169 1
P (A ∩ B) = = .
2704 16
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 Probabilities of event intersections

An easier way to calculate P (A ∩ B) is to realize that A and B are

independent and so

1 1 1
P (A ∩ B) = P (A)P (B) = × = .
4 4 16

The independence of A and B follows from the fact that with the

replacement of the rst card and with appropriate shuing of the pack to

ensure randomness, the outcome of the second card is not related to the

outcome of the rst card.

If the drawings are done without replacement, then clearly A and B are not

independent, since
12 1
P (B|A) = ̸= = P (B).
51 4

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 Probabilities of event intersections

Probability trees
A company sells a certain type of car that it assembles in one of 4 possible locations:
Plant I supplies 20% of the cars Plant II 24%
Plant III 25% Plant IV 31%
A customer buying a car does not know where the car has been assembled. So the
probabilities of a purchased car being from each of the 4 plants can be thought of as
being 0.2, 0.24, 0.25 and 0.31.
Each new car sold carries a one-year bumper-to-bumper warranty. Collected data show
that
P (claim|Plant I) = 0.05 P (claim|Plant II) = 0.11
P (claim|Plant III) = 0.03 P (claim|Plant IV) = 0.08

For example, a car assembled in Plant I has a probability of 0.05 of receiving a claim on
its warranty. This information indicates which assembly plants do the best job.
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 Probabilities of event intersections

We will use a probability tree to represent the probability values of the

outcomes:

The probability that a customer purchases a car assembled in Plant I and

claims the warranty is given by

P (Plant I ∩ claim) = 0.2 ∗ 0.05 = 0.01.

The other probabilities are calculated similarly.

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 Probabilities of event intersections

From a customer's point of view, the probability of interest is the

probability that a claim on the warranty of the car will be required.

This is given by

P (claim) = P (Plant I ∩ claim) + P (Plant II ∩ claim)

+ P (Plant III ∩ claim) + P (Plant IV ∩ claim)

= 0.01 + 0.0264 + 0.0075 + 0.0248 = 0.0687.

In words, this means roughly 6.87% of the cars purchased will have a claim

on their warranty.

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 Probabilities of event intersections

Games of chance 2

Die rolling In the roll of a fair die, consider the events

even = {2, 4, 6} and high score = {4, 5, 6}

Intuitively, these 2 events are not independent since the knowledge that a

high score is obtained increases the chances of the score being even.

Vice versa, the knowledge that the score is even increases the chances of

the score being high.

Mathematically, these are conrmed by noting that

1 2
P (even) = and P (even|high score) = .
2 3
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 Probabilities of event intersections

If a red die and a blue die are rolled, consider the probability that both dice

record even scores. In this case, the scores on the 2 dice will be

independent of each other.

Let A be the event that the red die has an even score.

Let B be the event that the blue die has an even score.

Then
1 1 1
P (A ∩ B) = P (A)P (B) = ∗ = .
2 2 4

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 Probabilities of event intersections

A more tedious way to derive this is to count the number of outcomes in

A∩B out of the total 36 outcomes:

9 1
P (A ∩ B) = =
36 4

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 Probabilities of event intersections

Card playing Suppose that 2 cards are drawn from a pack of cards without
replacement. What is the probability that exactly one card from the heart

suit is obtained?

A very tedious way to solve this problem is to count the number of

outcomes in the sample space that satisfy this condition.

A better way is

P (exactly 1 heart) = P (1st card heart ∩ 2nd card not heart)

+ P (1st card not heart ∩ 2nd card heart)

13 39 39 13 13
= × + × = = 0.382.
52 51 52 51 34
Since the drawings are made without replacement, the 2 events rst card

heart and second card heart are not independent.

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 Probabilities of event intersections

However, if the drawings are done with replacement, then the 2 are

independent, and we have

P (exactly 1 heart) = P (1st card heart ∩ 2nd card not heart)

+ P (1st card not heart ∩ 2nd card heart)

1 3 3 1 3
= × + × = = 0.375.
4 4 4 4 8

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