Probability is the likelihood of a particular outcome or event happening. Statisticians and actuaries use probability to make predictions about events.  An actuary that works for a car insurance company would, for example, be interested in how likely a 17 year old male would be to get in a car accident.  They would use data from past events to make predictions about future events using the characteristics of probabilities, then use this information to calculate an insurance rate.

In this section, we will explore the definition of an event, and learn how to calculate the probability of it’s occurance.  We will also practice using standard mathematical notation to calculate and describe different kinds of probabilities.