Probability

Probability

Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

 theory is the branch of mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 concerned with analysis of random

Statistical randomness

A numeric sequence is said to be statistically random when it contains no recognizable patterns or regularities; sequences such as the results of an ideal dice roll, or the digits of π exhibit statistical randomness....

 phenomena. The central objects of probability theory are random variable

Random variable

In probability and statistics, a random variable or stochastic variable is, roughly speaking, a variable whose value results from a measurement on some type of random process. Formally, it is a function from a probability space, typically to the real numbers, which is measurable functionmeasurable...

s, stochastic process

Stochastic process

In probability theory, a stochastic process , or sometimes random process, is the counterpart to a deterministic process...

es, and event

Event (probability theory)

In probability theory, an event is a set of outcomes to which a probability is assigned. Typically, when the sample space is finite, any subset of the sample space is an event...

s: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic

Determinism

Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...

 events or measured quantities that may either be single occurrences or evolve over time in an apparently random fashion. If an individual coin toss or the roll of dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

 is considered to be a random event, then if repeated many times the sequence of random events will exhibit certain patterns, which can be studied and predicted.