The U.S. Coast Guard maintains a database of the number, source, and location of oil spills in the U.S. navigable and territorial waters. The following is a probability distribution for location of oil spill events. [Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States.] Location Probability Atlantic Ocean 0.008 Pacific Ocean 0.037 Gulf of Mexico 0.233 Great Lakes 0.020 Other Lakes 0.002 Rivers and canals 0.366 Bays and sounds 0.146 Harbors 0.161 Other 0.027
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
The U.S. Coast Guard maintains a database of the number, source, and location of oil spills in the U.S. navigable and territorial waters. The following is a
|
Location |
Probability |
|
Atlantic Ocean |
0.008 |
|
Pacific Ocean |
0.037 |
|
Gulf of Mexico |
0.233 |
|
Great Lakes |
0.020 |
|
Other Lakes |
0.002 |
|
Rivers and canals |
0.366 |
|
Bays and sounds |
0.146 |
|
Harbors |
0.161 |
|
Other |
0.027 |
If an oil spill is selected at random from the database, what is the probability:
- The oil spill occurred in an ocean?
- The oil spill occurred in a lake or harbor?
- The oil spill did not occur in a lake, ocean, river, or canal?
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