CNN News Clip

"I love to make money. I love to build houses," says Chen Chen, as he plays a Chinese version of the popular game of Monopoly. Many children's games, as well as making money "in life," involve ideas of probability. We see other examples of the use of probability every day, in weather forecasts, stock market analyses, contests, and strategies in gambling. Probability is the mathematics of uncertainty. "Wait a minute," interrupts Sammy. "I thought that mathematics was absolute and that there was no uncertainty about it!" "Well, Sammy, suppose that you are playing a game of Monopoly," says Chen. "Do you know what you'll land on in your next turn?" "No, but neither do you!" exclaimed Sammy. "That's right," responds Chen, "But mathematics can tell us what property you are most likely to land on. There is nothing uncertain about probability; rather, probability is a way of describing uncertainty. For example, what is the probability of tossing a coin and obtaining heads?" "That's easy; it's one-half," answers Sammy. "Right, but why do you say it is one-half?"

In this section, we'll investigate the definition of probability and some of the procedures for dealing with probability.