Solve Statistics Problems

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You use the rule P(A or B) = P(A) P(B) - P(A and B) when the events are not mutually exclusive.

For the complement rule, you always use the rule P(A) = 1 - P(~A).

So in essence, you want the probability of her choosing these two flavors.

Determine whether the events are mutually exclusive or independent if appropriate.

Most probability questions are word problems, which require you to set up the problem and break down the information given to solve.

The process to solve the problem is rarely straightforward and takes practice to perfect.The keywords are "and," "or" and "not." For instance, consider the following word problem: "What is the probability that Jane will choose both the chocolate and the vanilla ice cream cones given that she chooses chocolate 60 percent of the time, vanilla 70 percent of the time, and neither 10 percent of the time." This problem has the keyword "and." Find the correct rule of probability.For problems with the keyword "and," the rule of probability to use is a multiplication rule.The problem says that P(A = chocolate) = 60% and P(B = vanilla) = 70%. You can substitute the word "chocolate" when you see the event A and the word "vanilla" when you see the event B.Using the appropriate equation for the example and substituting the values, the equation is now P(chocolate and vanilla) = 60% x 70%. Using the previous example, P(chocolate and vanilla) = 60 percent x 70 percent.Collecting data to help answer the question is an important step in the process.You obtain data by measuring something, so your measurement methods must be chosen with care.Statistics is used every day to help us gain insight into questions that affect our lives: Is our population growing or shrinking? Will eating more fruits and vegetables really make us live longer?Four things make a problem statistical: the way in which you ask the question, the role and nature of the data, the particular ways in which you examine the data, and the types of interpretations you make from the investigation.But statistics is more than just a bunch of numbers: Statistics is a problem-solving process that seeks answers to questions through data.By asking and answering statistical questions, we can learn more about the world around us.