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Showing posts with the label Origin of Probability

The Story of Probability

 Why was the concept of probability invented? This is the question we are going to answer through this post. Probability was discovered to answer a gambling problem. The original problem is a bit complicated but the simplified version goes like this.  Suppose two persons, A and B are playing a game of coin toss where the person who gets their toss thrice first wins a pot of gold. If the score is 2-1 and the game has to be stopped due to some unforeseeable reasons then how would the pot of gold be divided?  By logic, since A is leading with 2 points and B only has 1 point, the pot can be divided in the ratio of 2:1 . This seems like a good argument but this fails when the score is 0-1. In this case, it seems unfair to give the pot of gold to B based on the previous argument when A may have a chance to win in the upcoming tosses. But if one were to calculate the probability of winning the game of the two players, then it would give us a foolproof explanation as to how...