[EM] Probability Info

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

The recent probability postings prompted me to dust off an old math book of 
mine.

The first probability work was circa 1494 (regarding the sharing of gambling 
winnings by 2 players).

Pascal and Fermat worked on probability theory in the 1600's and are deemed 
its founders.

Simple experiments- 2 sided coin tosses 6 sided dice rolls.

Many tosses and rolls-

Odds -- Duh-- 

Coin 1/2 for each side

Dice 1/6 for each side

Some probabilities are obviously not known in advance-- odds that product X 
will be defective (as in the recent SUV/tire fiasco) or that John/Mary Q. 
Citizen will have an accident and die in a given year (as a result of such 
SUV/tire fiasco --- keeping quality control folks, life insurance folks and 
lawyers very busy).

Result (barebones outline)----

Various probability theorems --

Addition theorem
Multiplication theorem (plus its variant applying to dependent events)

Venn diagrams--

overlapping events
mutually exclusive events
independent events

The above leads to -- ordered data (like school test scores), frequency 
distributions, frequency histograms, frequency polygons (raw and cumulative), 
mean, deviations, standard deviations, random sampling, operating 
charactestic curves, hypothesis testing, level of significance (and tests for 
it).

How many voters cast a probability vote for any choice (especially if he/she 
could vote for more than 1 choice) ???

I mention again for about the 10th time- any election method works on the 
votes as cast (NOT the reverse).   

There obviously is an elementary difference between making wilful choices and 
having random events happen (especially those with unpredictable 
possibilities -- Mother Earth stops rotating, the Titantic hitting an iceberg 
on a moonless night, etc.).