Thread: Empirical or Theoretical Probability

Geologists say that the probability of a major earthquake occurring the San Francisco Bay area in the next 30 years is about 90%. Is this empirical probability or theoretical probability?

NOTE:

What is the difference between Empirical or Theoretical Probability?

Originally Posted by symmetry

Geologists say that the probability of a major earthquake occurring the San Francisco Bay area in the next 30 years is about 90%. Is this empirical probability or theoretical probability?

NOTE:

What is the difference between Empirical or Theoretical Probability?

You learn this in basic statistics; empirical is based on past experiences/events (and will subsequently use Markov chains to view future predictions) whereas theoretical finds the number of ways in which a specific event will occur.

In this case, it's easy to determine that it is empirical probability.

Did you know that most students (even math majors) dislike statistics and probability courses?

I wonder why, though....

Originally Posted by symmetry

Did you know that most students (even math majors) dislike statistics and probability courses?

I wonder why, though....

I'm a math major, and I dislike statistics too. Especially the statistics here. It's an easy-way to get out of fulfilling the Math requirement, and it is generally tedious. The concepts are not hard to understand, but I do not enjoy working with confidence levels, hypothesis testing and such. Tedious is definitely an understatement. Therefore, stats is definitely the math course I dislike the most.

I am not a math major but love math very much. I like probability more than statistics. The only topics I like in statistics are the basic stuff like finding the mode, median and average. Anything else is not my cup of tea.