PRESENTATION OUTLINE

1. Introduction
2. Objective
3. Literature Review
3. What Is Probability Theory
4. What Is The Role Of Probability In Ai?
5. Conditional Probability
6. Joint Probability
7. Cumulative Probability
8. Summary
9. References 1
 INTRODUCTION

• Probability is a branch of mathematics that deals with calculating the

likelihood of a given event's occurrence.

• Probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical

manner by expressing it through a set of axioms.

• Typically these axioms formalise probability in terms of

a probability space, which assigns a measure taking values between
0 and 1.

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 1.OBJECTIVE

• To understand what is probability theory.

• What's use of probability in A.I .
• What are different types of probability
theory.

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 2.LITERATURE REVIEW

• William Feller(2003)-probability theory is essential to many

human activities that involve quantitative analysis of data.
Methods of probability theory also apply to descriptions of
complex systems given only partial knowledge of their state,
as in statistical mechanics[1] .

• Kai-Lai Chung(2007)-probability Theory is a real - valued

function defined on a set of events in a probability space that
satisfies measure properties such as countable additively[2] .

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 3.WHAT IS PROBABILITY
THEORY?
• The word probability has several meanings in ordinary
conversation.
• Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will
occur in a Random Experiment.
• Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, where,
loosely speaking, 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates
certainty.
• The higher the probability of an event, the more likely it is that
the event will occur.

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 EXAMPLE
• A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin.

• Since the coin is fair, the two outcomes (“heads” and “tails”)
are both equally probable; the probability of “heads” equals
the probability of “tails”.

• since no other outcomes are possible, the probability of either

“heads” or “tails” is 1/2 (which could also be written as 0.5 or
50%)

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 4.What is the role of probability
in AI?
• Many algorithms are designed as if knowledge is perfect, but it
rarely is.
• There are almost always things that are unknown, or not
precisely known.
• Examples: - IBM watson
- Weather forecasting
- Quickest way to the airport

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 5.CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY

• Conditional Probability is a measure of the probability of an

event given that (by assumption and presumption) another
event has already occurred.

• If the event of interest is A and the event B is known or

assumed to have occurred, “the conditional probability of A
given B”, is usually written as P(A|B).
Pr(A|B) = Pr(A and B)
Pr(B) ,
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EXAMPLE

Fig:1.1
Example of conditional probability

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 6.JOINT PROBABILITY
• If X and Y are two random variables, defines their
simultaneous behaviour during outcomes of a random
experiment is called a joint probability distribution.[2]

• Joint probability of X and Y ,defined as

P(X,Y)=P(X)*P(Y)

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EXAMPLE

Fig-1.2
Example of joint probability 11
7.CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY
• A cumulative probability refers to the probability that
the value of a random variable falls within a specified
range.

• Frequently, cumulative probabilities refer to the

probability that a random variable is less than or
equal to a specified value.

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 EXAMPLE
Assume 20% of Americans have no health insurance. Lets take 15
sample. Let X denote the number in the sample with no health
insurance. What is the probability that at most one of those sampled
has no health insurance?[4]
Solution. "At most one" means either 0 or 1 of those sampled have no
health insurance. That is, we need to find:
P(X ≤ 1) = P(X = 0) + P(X = 1)
Using the cumulative probability function variable are n = 15 , p =
20%=0.2 and r=80%=0.8 we have:
P(X≤1)=(15/0)(0.2)^0(0.8)^15+(15/1)(0.2)^1(0.8)^14=0.0352+0.1319=0.167

16.7% is most one of those sampled has no health insurance. 13

 8.SUMMARY
• Many events can't be predicted with total certainty. The best we can
say is how likely they are to happen, using the idea of probability.
(Objective 1).
• The role of probability is to reduce uncertainty in A.I
and to guess when something is going to wear out so they can
intelligently replace it. (objective 2)
• In A.I Conditional probability and joint probability is most used
where as cumulative probability is used in some case where
hidden (latent) variables are involved. (objective 3)

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 9.REFERENCES
[1] William Feller- (2003). "Teaching Inference about
Proportions Using Bayes and Discrete Models." Journal of
Statistics Education, 3(3).
[2] Kai-Lai Chung- (2007). "Students' Understanding of the
Logic of Hypothesis Testing." Journal-of-Research-in-
Science-Teaching 16(1): 61-65.
[3]American Statistical Association (1998). What is margin of
error? What is a survey? S. o. S. R. Methods. Alexandria, VA.
Ayer, A. J. (1972). Probability and evidence. New York,
Columbia University Press.
[4]Ball, D. and G. W. McDiarmid (1990). The subject matter
preparation of teachers. Handbook of research on teacher
education. W. R. Houston 15
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