Question

STATISTICS: What is the differnce between empirical probability and theoretical probability?

Answer 1

empirical generally means "based on experimental results"
whereas theoretical is "based on mathematical theory"

this site might help this better: http://regentsprep.org/Regents/math/ALGEBRA/APR5/theoProp.htm

Answer 2

Thank you VERY much.

Answer 3

yw :)

Answer 4

@asnaseer
You have empirical probability, theoretical probability, but then you have all these other rules like:

a) addition rule
b) general addition rule
c) multiplication rule
d) general multiplication rule
e) complementary rule

Are these probability rules trying to give you the theoretical probability OR empirical probability?

Answer 5

no - they are just rules on how to calculate probabilities. the actual probabilities involved can be empirical or theoretical.

Answer 6

think of standard maths - you have addition rules, multiplication rules, etc for numbers.
but the numbers you use can be those derived through theory, or those measured via experiments.

Answer 7

the rule just state how to combine these quantities

Answer 8

*rules

Answer 9

hope that makes sense

Answer 10

So we could be working with either empirical or theoretical. The rules are just helping us compute probabilities for either of them

Answer 11

yes :)

Answer 12

We use this as a shortcut to calculating the emprical probability of something when using the actual empirical probability formula may be impractical.

Answer 13

these* not this

Answer 14

Right?

Answer 15

there isn't a "formula" for empirical probability - empirical probabilities are "measured".

but, if you have measured a set of empirical probabilities, then you can combine them using these rules.

Answer 16

e.g. you may measure the empirical probabilities of two events that you know are independent. you can then use the rules to work out the probability of both events happening.

Answer 17

make sense now?