What Are the Odds?

The probability of an event represents the likelihood of the event to occur. For example, most of us would agree that the probability of getting a heads after flipping a fair coin is 0.5 or that the probability of getting a one on rolling a fair die is 1/6. However, there are many more places where we encounter probabilities in our lives. During election season, we have pundits and polls speaking to the likelihood (probability) of winning for each candidate. Doctors will often state that a pa...