Addition Rules for Probability

Experiment 1: A single 6-sided die is rolled. What is the probability of rolling a 2 or a

5?
Possibilities:

1. The number rolled can be a 2.

2. The number rolled can be a 5.

Events:

These events are mutually exclusive since they cannot occur at the
same time.

Probabilities:

How do we find the probabilities of these mutually exclusive events? We

need a rule to guide us.

Addition Rule 1:

When two events, A and B, are mutually exclusive, the probability that
A or B will occur is the sum of the probability of each event.
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B)

Let's use this addition rule to find the probability for Experiment 1.
Experiment 1: A single 6-sided die is rolled. What is the probability of rolling a 2 or a
5?
Probabilities:

P(2)

1
6

P(5)

1
6

P(2 or 5) = P(2) + P(5)

=

1
1
+
6
6

2
6

1
3

Experiment 2: A spinner has 4 equal sectors colored yellow, blue, green,

and red. What is the probability of landing on red or blue
after spinning this spinner?
Probabilities:

P(red)

1
4

P(blue)

1
4

P(red or blue) = P(red) + P(blue)

=

4
=

2
4

1
2

Experiment 3: A glass jar contains 1 red, 3 green, 2 blue, and 4

yellow marbles. If a single marble is chosen at random
from the jar, what is the probability that it is yellow or
green?
Probabilities:

P(yellow)

4
10

P(green)

3
10

P(yellow or green) = P(yellow) + P(green)

=

4
10

7
10

3
10

In each of the three experiments above, the events are mutually exclusive. Let's look at
some experiments in which the events are non-mutually exclusive.
Experiment 4:

A single card is chosen at random from a standard

deck of 52 playing cards. What is the probability of
choosing a king or a club?

Probabilities:

P(king or club) = P(king) + P(club) - P(king of clubs)

=

4
52

16
52

4
13

13
52

1
52

In Experiment 4, the events are non-mutually exclusive. The addition causes the king of
clubs to be counted twice, so its probability must be subtracted. When two events are nonmutually exclusive, a different addition rule must be used.

Addition Rule 2:

When two events, A and B, are non-mutually exclusive, the probability that
A or B will occur is:

P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)

In the rule above, P(A and B) refers to the overlap of the two events. Let's apply this rule to
some other experiments.

Experiment 5:

In a math class of 30 students, 17 are boys and 13 are

girls. On a unit test, 4 boys and 5 girls made an A
grade. If a student is chosen at random from the class,
what is the probability of choosing a girl or an A
student?

Probabilities:

P(girl or A) = P(girl) + P(A) - P(girl and A)

=

13
30

17
30

9
30

5
30

Experiment 6: On New Year's Eve, the probability of a person

having a car accident is 0.09. The probability of a
person driving while intoxicated is 0.32 and
probability of a person having a car accident while
intoxicated is 0.15. What is the probability of a
person driving while intoxicated or having a car
accident?
Probabilities:
P(intoxicated or accident) = P(intoxicated) + P(accident) - P(intoxicated and accident)
=
=
Summary:

0.32
0.26

0.09

0.15

To find the probability of event A or B, we must first determine whether the

events are mutually exclusive or non-mutually exclusive. Then we can apply
the appropriate Addition Rule:
Addition Rule 1: When two events, A and B, are mutually exclusive, the
probability that A or B will occur is the sum of the
probability of each event.
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B)
Addition Rule 2:: When two events, A and B, are non-mutually exclusive,
there is some overlap between these events. The
probability that A or B will occur is the sum of the
probability of each event, minus the probability of the

overlap.
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)

Further Concepts in Probability

The study of probability mostly deals with combining different events and studying these events
alongside each other. How these different events relate to each other determines the methods and
rules to follow when we're studying their probabilities.
Events can be pided into two major categories dependent or Independent events.

Conditional Probability
We have already defined dependent and independent events and seen how probability of one
event relates to the probability of the other event.
Having those concepts in mind, we can now look at conditional probability.
Conditional probability deals with further defining dependence of events by looking at
probability of an event given that some other event first occurs.
Conditional probability is denoted by the following:

The above is read as the probability that B occurs given that A has already occurred.
The above is mathematically defined as:

Rules of Probability
When dealing with more than one event, there are certain rules that we must follow when
studying probability of these events. These rules depend greatly on whether the events we are
looking at are Independent or dependent on each other.
First acknowledge that

Multiplication Rule (AB)

This region is referred to as 'A intersection B' and in probability; this region refers to the event
that both A and B happen. When we use the word and we are referring to multiplication, thus A
and B can be thought of as AxB or (using dot notation which is more popular in probability)
AB
If A and B are dependent events, the probability of this event happening can be calculated as
shown below:

If A and B are independent events, the probability of this event happening can be calculated as
shown below:

Conditional probability for two independent events can be redefined using the relationship above
to become:

The above is consistent with the definition of independent events, the occurrence of event A in
no way influences the occurrence of event B, and so the probability that event B occurs given
that event A has occurred is the same as the probability of event B.

Additive Rule (AB)

In probability we refer to the addition operator (+) as or. Thus when we want to we want to
define some event such that the event can be A or B, to find the probability of that event:

Thus it follows that:

But remember from set theory that and from the way we defined our sample space above:

and that:

So we can now redefine out event as

The above is sometimes referred to as the subtraction rule.

Mutual Exclusivity
Certain special pairs of events have a unique relationship referred to as mutual exclusivity.
Two events are said to be mutually exclusive if they can't occur at the same time. For a given
sample space, its either one or the other but not both. As a consequence, mutually exclusive
events have their probability defined as follows:

An example of mutually exclusive events are the outcomes of a fair coin flip. When you flip a
fair coin, you either get a head or a tail but not both, we can prove that these events are mutually
exclusive by adding their probabilities:

For any given pair of events, if the sum of their probabilities is equal to one, then those two
events are mutually exclusive.

Rules of Probability for Mutually Exclusive Events

Multiplication Rule
From the definition of mutually exclusive events, we should quickly conclude the
following:

Addition Rule

As we defined above, the addition rule applies to mutually exclusive events as follows:

Subtraction Rule
From the addition rule above, we can conclude that the subtraction rule for mutually
exclusive events takes the form;

Rules of Probability
Often, we want to compute the probability of an event from the known probabilities of other
events. This lesson covers some important rules that simplify those computations.

Definitions and Notation

Before discussing the rules of probability, we state the following definitions:

Two events are mutually exclusive or disjoint if they cannot occur at the same time.

The probability that Event A occurs, given that Event B has occurred, is called a
conditional probability. The conditional probability of Event A, given Event B, is
denoted by the symbol P(A|B).

The complement of an event is the event not occuring. The probability that Event A will
not occur is denoted by P(A').

The probability that Events A and B both occur is the probability of the intersection of A
and B. The probability of the intersection of Events A and B is denoted by P(A B). If
Events A and B are mutually exclusive, P(A B) = 0.

The probability that Events A or B occur is the probability of the union of A and B. The
probability of the union of Events A and B is denoted by P(A B) .

If the occurence of Event A changes the probability of Event B, then Events A and B are
dependent. On the other hand, if the occurence of Event A does not change the
probability of Event B, then Events A and B are independent.

Rule of Subtraction
In a previous lesson, we learned two important properties of probability:

The probability of an event ranges from 0 to 1.

The sum of probabilities of all possible events equals 1.

The rule of subtraction follows directly from these properties.

Rule of Subtraction The probability that event A will occur is equal to 1 minus the probability
that event A will not occur.
P(A) = 1 - P(A')
Suppose, for example, the probability that Bill will graduate from college is 0.80. What is the
probability that Bill will not graduate from college? Based on the rule of subtraction, the
probability that Bill will not graduate is 1.00 - 0.80 or 0.20.

Rule of Multiplication
The rule of multiplication applies to the situation when we want to know the probability of the
intersection of two events; that is, we want to know the probability that two events (Event A and
Event B) both occur.
Rule of Multiplication The probability that Events A and B both occur is equal to the
probability that Event A occurs times the probability that Event B occurs, given that A has
occurred.
P(A B) = P(A) P(B|A)
Example
An urn contains 6 red marbles and 4 black marbles. Two marbles are drawn without replacement
from the urn. What is the probability that both of the marbles are black?
Solution: Let A = the event that the first marble is black; and let B = the event that the second
marble is black. We know the following:

In the beginning, there are 10 marbles in the urn, 4 of which are black. Therefore, P(A) =
4/10.
After the first selection, there are 9 marbles in the urn, 3 of which are black. Therefore,
P(B|A) = 3/9.

Therefore, based on the rule of multiplication:

P(A B) = P(A) P(B|A)
P(A B) = (4/10) * (3/9) = 12/90 = 2/15

Rule of Addition
The rule of addition applies to the following situation. We have two events, and we want to
know the probability that either event occurs.

Rule of Addition The probability that Event A or Event B occurs is equal to the probability that
Event A occurs plus the probability that Event B occurs minus the probability that both Events A
and B occur.
P(A B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A B))
Note: Invoking the fact that P(A B) = P( A )P( B | A ), the Addition Rule can also be
expressed as
P(A B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A)P( B | A )
Example
A student goes to the library. The probability that she checks out (a) a work of fiction is 0.40, (b)
a work of non-fiction is 0.30, and (c) both fiction and non-fiction is 0.20. What is the probability
that the student checks out a work of fiction, non-fiction, or both?
Solution: Let F = the event that the student checks out fiction; and let N = the event that the
student checks out non-fiction. Then, based on the rule of addition:
P(F N) = P(F) + P(N) - P(F N)
P(F N) = 0.40 + 0.30 - 0.20 = 0.50

If A and B are events, the probability of obtaining either of them is:

P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)
If the events A and B are mutually exclusive( that is, if both events cannot occur
simultaneously), the last term [P(A and B)] will be 0. Thus the addition rule with mutually
exclusive events becomes:
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B)

Addition
Rule

Example:
Suppose a high school consists of 25% juniors, 15% seniors, and the remaining 60% is
students of other grades. The relative frequency of students who are either juniors and seniors
is 40%. We can add the relative frequencies of juniors and seniors because no student can be
both junior and senior.
P(J or S) = 0.25 + 0.15
which equals 0.40
The above formula can be expanded to consider more than two exclusive events:
P(A or B or C or D... or Z) = P(A) + P(B) + P(C) + ... + P(Z)

Diagrams that picture the sample space, S, as an area in the plane and events as areas within S
are called Venn Diagrams.

Venn
Diagrams
In the first Venn diagram (left), events A and B are mutually exclusive. In the second Venn
diagram (right), events A and B are not mutually exclusive.

Example:
Suppose that we draw one card from a deck of 52 playing cards. What is the probability that
the card will be either a king or a heart? The probability of drawing a king is 4/52; the
probability of drawing a heart is 13/52; and the probability of drawing the king of hearts is
1/52. Therefore:
P(K or H) = 4/52 + 13/52 - 1/52 = 4/13
In the preceding section, we were concerned with determining the probability of obtaining
one event or another based upon a single draw. Now we will learn how events A and B both
occur simultaneously.

Example:

Independent
Variables

What is the probability that two tails occurs when two coins are tossed? Let A represent the
occurrence of a tail on the first coin and B represent the occurrence of a tail on the second
coin. In this example, the occurrence of A is not dependent upon the occurrence of B and vice
versa. Events A and B are said to be Independent. That is, the outcome of the first toss has
no effect on the outcome of the second toss. The probability of the simultaneous occurrences
of two independent events is the product of the probabilities of each event:
P(A and B) = P(A) . P(B)
P(A) = 1/2
P(B) = 1/2
P(A and B) = 1/2 . 1/2 = 1/4

Example:
Suppose we have two dice. A is the event that 4 shows on the first die, and B is the event that
4 shows on the second die. If both dice are rolled at once, what is the probability that two 4s
occur?
P(A) = 1/6

P(B) = 1/6
P(A and B) = P(A) . P(B) = 1/6 . 1/6 = 1/36

Multiplication
Rule
for
Independent
Events

P(A and B) = P(A) . P(B)

The above formula can be expanded. If A , B , C , ... , Z are independent events, then:
P(A and B and C and ... and Z) = P(A) . P(B) . P(C) ... P(Z)
When events are dependent, each possible outcome is related to the other. Given two events
A and B, the probability of obtaining both A and B is the product of the probability of
obtaining one of the events times the conditional probability of obtaining the other event,
given the first event has occurred.
P(A and B) = P(A) . P(B|A)
This rule says that for both of the two events to occur, the first one must occur ( (P(A) ) and
then, given the first event has occurred, the second event occurs ( (P(B|A) ).

Dependent
Variables

Example:
What is the probability of drawing two aces from a deck of playing cards? Since there are 4
aces in a 52 deck of cards, the probability of drawing one ace is 4/52. Having removed one
ace and not replacing it reduces the probabilities of drawing another ace on the second draw.
The 51 cards remaining contain 3 aces and therefore the probability of drawing an ace on the
second draw is 3/51. Therefore, we can multiply these probabilities and determine the
probability of drawing two aces:
4/52 . 3/51 = 1/221

Multiplication
Rule
for
Dependent
Events

The multiplication rule for dependent events can be extended to several dependent events:
P(A and B and C) = P(A) . P(B|A) . P(C|A and B)