Abstract
The word ‘probability’ is used frequently in a loose sense implying that a certain event has a good chance of occurring. In this sense it is a qualitative or subjective measure. It is important to realize that it has a strict technical meaning and is a scientific ‘measure of chance’, i.e., it defines quantitatively the likelihood of an event or events. Mathematically it is a numerical index that can vary between zero which defines an absolute impossibility to unity which defines an absolute certainty. This scale of probability is illustrated in Figure 2.1. A philosopher might argue that the two ends of the scale do not exist. An engineer might disagree from a pragmatic viewpoint. For example, the probability that a man will live for ever is zero, and the probability that one day he will die is unity.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Billinton, R., Allan, R.N. (1992). Basic probability theory. In: Reliability Evaluation of Engineering Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0685-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0685-4_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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