Table of Contents

• 1: Introduction
• The Law of OR
• 2: All Life's a Game
• 3: The Law of OR
• 4: Some Fine Print
• 5: What if you violate the fine print?
• The Law of AND
• 6: More game shows
• 7: What are the chances?
• 8: The Law of AND
• 9: More Fine Print
• 10: Examples of independent events
• 11: What if you violate the fine print?
• AND and OR together
• 12: Summary
• 13: Practice with dice
• 14: Practice with coins
• Biological Applications
• 15:What else can probability do?
• 16: To Curl or not to Curl
• 17: Surviving the Numbers Game
• 18: Gaining an Edge
• 19: Hanging on for Dear Life

Learning Outcomes

After completing this module you should be able to:

• Explain what is meant by the terms mutually exclusive events and independent events.
• Calculate probabilities associated with these types of events.
• Compute probabilities set in a biological context.

Introduction

We're going to start with the laws of probability – two of them, to be exact. If you master these 2 laws, everything else will be easier. They are called

and

(Okay, I'm sure in a probability text they have much more impressive names, but these names are a bit easier to remember).

Let's get started.