Conditional Probability

Kevin Lin
October 6th, 2014

The Simple Ideas

Conditional probability is based heavily off independent and dependent events. It especially bases off
dependent events, in which cases are built off of the outcomes of a certain event.
Independent events are events unaffected by other events. A simple example is flipping a coin twice. Whatever outcome you get on your first toss - heads or tails - has no bearing on the outcome of the second toss.
Thus, we say that the two events are independent.
In contrast, dependent events are events that ARE affected by other events. For example, if you have a bag
of 4 blue marbles and 2 red marbles, and you pick out two marbles without replacement, one at a time,
the probability of what color marble is pulled out the second time is dependent on the first event. If a blue
marble was drawn the first time, there is a 35 chance of drawing another blue marble. On the other hand, if
a red marble is drawn the first time, there is a 45 chance of drawing another blue marble.
A lot of the time, this is presented well using a Venn diagram. In these Venn diagrams, each circle represents
an event; the interior of the circle is when the event occurs while the exterior is where it does not occur.

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2.1

Equations
Syntax

In general, when we have events A and B, we can denote the probability of A occurring as P (A) and likewise,
the probability of B occurring as P (B). The two major logical operators which act on probabilities are given
as for and and for or. For the operator not, several notations are used, most notably the tilda
and symbols.

2.2

Multiplication Rule

When we compound two events, where one is dependent, we can write P (B|A), which denotes the probability
of B given A. For example, in our example of the first section, we can call A the probability of drawing a
blue marble on the first try and B the probability of drawing a blue marble on the second time. P (B|A) is
thus 35 .

Now say we wanted to find the probability of drawing two blue marbles, that is, P (A B). Thinking our
way through it, P (B|A) is the probability that B occurs given A - so if we want the probability that B and
A occur, we should multiply by the probability of A occurring in the first place. Thus we come up with our
formula:

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

This is often called the Multiplication Rule.

2.3

Law of Total Probability

The Law of Total Probability is a relatively direct application of the multiplication rule with straight logic.
It says that if the space of events studied is split up into n parts from event B, with outcomes B1 , B2 , ...
Bn , we can conclude that:

P (A) = P (A B1 ) + P (A B2 )... + P (A Bn )
P (A) = P (A|B1 ) P (B1 ) + P (A|B2 ) P (B2 )... + P (A Bn ) P (Bn )

2.4

Bayes Theorem

Furthermore, we know that P (A B) = P (A) P (B|A) = P (B) P (A|B). But suppose we wanted to find
P (B|A) not using P (A B):
P (B|A) P (A) = P (A B)
P (A|B) P (B) = P (B A)
P (B|A) =

P (B) P (A|B)
P (A)

This is a simple version of Bayes Theorem, which can also be written as:

P (B|A) =

P (B) P (A|B)
P (B) P (A|B) + P (B) P (A|B)

Caseworking

An important tenet of conditional probability is caseworking. Sometimes (actually most of the time) when
conditions are set up, its not easy to just apply the above equations. In essence, caseworking is a more
general form of those equations, especially the Law of Total Probability. For example, in our marble bag
example, we could think of the outcome as evaluating two separate cases - one case has the first marble
chosen be blue and the other case has the first marble chosen being red.
For many simpler problems, caseworking often yields an elegant solution, which is very useful for competitions like the AIME. However, many higher-level contests dont just use simple caseworking - many times
caseworking can turn into a brute force bash. Nevertheless, caseworking is an essential tool for understand
conditional probability - just use in moderation.
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Problems

These are the fundamental ideas behind conditional probability, but these ideas are much more important
and generally more difficult to apply in context. It is very important to understand conditional probability
itself rather than memorize equations, as they can rarely be blindly applied.
Problem 1. A weighted coin has a 20% chance of landing on heads and an 80% chance of landing on tails.
What is the probability that if the first flip was a heads, that the next two flips are both tails?
Problem 2. 20 marbles are in a jar: 5 yellow, 4 blue, 3 red, and 1 white, and 7 green. 4 marbles are taken
out one at a time. What is the probability that the third marble taken out is yellow and the fourth marble
taken out is blue?
Problem 3. On a coordinate plane, Buggy the bug starts at the origin. Buggy randomly moves left and up
along the gridlines and eventually arrives at (6, 6). What is the probability that Buggy got to (6,6) without
passing through (2, 4) or (4, 2)?
Problem 4. (2000 AIME II) A deck of forty cards consists of four 1s, four 2s,..., and four 10s. A matching
pair (two cards with the same number) is removed from the deck. Given that these cards are not returned
to the deck, let m/n be the probability that two randomly selected cards also form a pair, where m and n
are relatively prime positive integers. Find m + n.
Problem 5. (1983 AIME) The numbers 1447, 1005, and 1231 have something in common. Each is a
four-digit number beginning with 1 that has exactly two identical digits. How many such numbers are
there?
Problem 6. (2004 AIME II) How many positive integers less than 10,000 have at most two different digits?
Problem 7. (2011 AMC 10A) Each vertex of convex pentagon ABCDE is to be assigned a color. There
are 6 colors to choose from, and the ends of each diagonal must have different colors. How many different
colorings are possible?
Problem 8. (2005 AIME I) Robert has 4 indistinguishable gold coins and 4 indistinguishable silver coins.
Each coin has an engraving of one face on one side, but not on the other. He wants to stack the eight coins
on a table into a single stack so that no two adjacent coins are face to face. Find the number of possible
distinguishable arrangements of the 8 coins.
Problem 9. (2004 AIME II) A jar has 10 red candies and 10 blue candies. Terry picks two candies at
random, then Mary picks two of the remaining candies at random. Given that the probability that they
get the same color combination, irrespective of order, is m/n, where m and n are relatively prime positive
integers, find m + n.
Problem 10. (2006 AMC 12A) A bug starts at one vertex of a cube and moves along the edges of the
cube according to the following rule. At each vertex the bug will choose to travel along one of the three
edges emanating from that vertex. Each edge has equal probability of being chosen, and all choices are
independent. What is the probability that after seven moves the bug will have visited every vertex exactly
once?
Problem 11. (2007 AIME II) Let S be a set with six elements. Let P be the set of all subsets of S. Subsets
A and B of S, not necessarily distinct, are chosen independently and at random from P. The probability that
B is contained in at least one of A or S A is nmr , where m, n, and r are positive integers, n is prime, and
m and n are relatively prime. Find m + n + r. (The set S A is the set of all elements of S which are not
in A.)