Introduction to Probability Theory: Independence, Conditional Probability, and Bayes’ Theorem
Probability theory forms the backbone of modern data science, artificial intelligence, and statistics. Now, we’ll explore three fundamental concepts: Independence , Conditional Probability , and Bayes’ Theorem — with simple explanations and examples. What is Probability? Probability is a measure of how likely an event is to occur. It’s a number between 0 and 1: 0 means the event cannot happen . 1 means the event will definitely happen . All other numbers in between ( like 0.3, 0.75 ), represent different levels of likelihood. 1. Independence of Events Two events are said to be independent if the occurrence of one event does not affect the probability of occurrence of the other. Definition: Events A and B are independent if: P ( A and B ) = P ( A ) × P ( B ) Example: Tossing a coin and rolling a dice. Getting a Head (H) and rolling a 3 are independent because the outcome of the coin toss does not impact the dice roll. Suppose: P ( Head ) = 0.5 P(\text{Hea...