What are the fields of Probability and Statistics all about?
The fields of Probability and Statistics are concerned with the concept of uncertainty. There are many situations where we feel uncertain as to whether or not a statement is true or false because we do not have the necessary information to determine this. Most of us are familiar with the kinds of uncertainties that are presented in games of chance. For example, “the next flip of this coin will be a head” or “a card drawn from a shuffled deck is a spade”. After flipping the coin or drawing the card we will know whether these statements are true or false but prior to this we are uncertain. There are also many statements of great practical importance whose truth or falsity is uncertain; e.g. a certain chemical causes cancer in humans, in a particular manufacturing process 95% of the items produced are of acceptable quality, etc. Under appropriate conditions all of these uncertainties are amenable to analysis via probability and statistics. Probability is concerned with quantifying uncerta
