Why Probability Theory is important while studying Machine Learning?
What is Probability?
Probability is a mathematical description of randomness and uncertainty. It is a way to measure or quantify uncertainty. Another way to think about probability is that it is the official name for “chance.”
Probability is the Likelihood of Something Happening.
One way to think of probability is that it is the likelihood that something will occur.
Probability is used to answer the following types of questions:
Each of these examples has some uncertainty. For some, the chances are quite good, so the probability would be quite high. For others, the chances are not very good, so the probability is quite low.
Few Notions:
Example: Rolling a dice is a Random Experiment. Whose Sample Space is {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} and an Event could be “Obtaining an even number as outcome”.
Notation: If ‘A’ be an event then P(A) denotes the probability of that event. The “probability” of an event tells us how likely it is that the event will occur.
Probability as Relative Frequency:
To estimate the probability of event A, written P(A), we may repeat the random experiment many times and count the number of times event A occurs. Then P(A) is estimated by the ratio of the number of times A occurs to the number of repetitions, which is called the relative frequency of event A.
To estimate the probability of event A, written P(A), we may repeat the random experiment many times and count the number of times event A occurs. Then P(A) is estimated by the ratio of the number of times A occurs to the number of repetitions, which is called the relative frequency of event A.
Relative Frequency of Event A= (Number of times A occurred)/ (Total number of repetitions)
Law of Large Numbers: The actual (or true) probability of an event (A) is estimated by the relative frequency with which the event occurs in a long series of trials.
What is the probability that the number rolled is even, when an ordinary fair die is rolled once? We’ll denote this event by E (for even). So, we are interested in finding P(E). Let’s analyze this problem:
Basic Rules of Probability
Conditional Probability:
P(A|B), called Probability of Event ‘A’ given ‘B’ = (P(A∩B))/(P(B))
Example: Consider the following table which describes the smoking habit of few persons.
Gender |
Smoker |
Not Smoker |
Total |
Male |
187 |
53 |
240 |
Female |
57 |
203 |
260 |
Total |
244 |
256 |
500 |
P(Smoker | Female)= (P(Smoker and Female))/(P(Female))= (57⁄500)/(260⁄500)= 57/260=0.2192
-This is known as multiplication rule of probability.
Law of total probability:
The total probability rule (also called the Law of Total Probability) breaks up probability calculations into distinct parts. It’s used to find the probability of an event, A, when you don’t know enough about A’s probabilities to calculate it directly. Instead, you take a related event, B, and use that to calculate the probability for A.
Thus, the total probability rule in this case is:
P(A)=P(A∩B)+P (A∩Bc)
P(A)=P(B)×P(A|B)+P(Bc )×P(A|Bc)
Example: 80% of people attend their primary care physician regularly; 35% of those people have no health problems crop up during the following year. Out of the 20% of people who don’t see their doctor regularly, only 5% have no health issues during the following year. What is the probability a random person will have no health problems in the following year?
Let us consider, here the event of person having no health problem is denoted by A and people seeing doctor is denoted by B.
For n many events B1, B2, …, Bn
P(A)=P(A∩B1 )+P(A∩B2 )+ …+P (A∩Bn )
P(A) = ∑ P(A∩Bi ) ; [where i = 1 to n]
P(A) = ∑ P(A∩Bi ) = ∑ (P(Bi )×P(A|Bi)) ; [where i = 1 to n]
Bayes Rule:
From multiplication rule of probability: P(B)×P(A│B)=P (A∩B)= P(A)×P(B|A)
∴P(B│A)= (P(A|B))/(P(A))×P(B) , assuming that P(A)≠0
Example: Three machines produce the entire output of a Factory. The three machines account for 20%, 30%, and 50% of the factory output. The fraction of defective items produced is 5% for the first machine; 3% for the second machine; and 1% for the third machine. If an item is chosen at random from the total output and is found to be defective, what is the probability that it was produced by the third machine?
Let Xi denote the event that a randomly chosen item was made by the i th machine (for i = A, B, C). Let Y denote the event that a randomly chosen item is defective. Then P(XA )=0.2, P(XB )=0.3 and P(XC)=0.5
If the item was made by the first machine, then the probability that it is defective is 0.05; that is, P(Y | XA) = 0.05. Overall, we have P(Y|XA )=0.05, P(Y|XB )=0.03 and P(Y|XC)=0.01
What is the probability that the randomly chosen item is defective?
P(Y)= ∑ [P(Xi )×P(Y|Xi)] = 0.2×0.05+0.3×0.03+0.5×0.01=0.024 ; [where i = 1 to 3]
Hence around 2.4% of the total output of the factory is defective.
We are given that Y has occurred, and we want to calculate the conditional probability of XC. By Bayes’ theorem,
P(XC│Y)= (P(Y|XC))/(P(Y))×P(XC )= 0.01/0.024×0.5= 5/24