Math 143 C/E, Spring 2001
IPS Reading Questions
Chapter 4, Section 1 (pp. 288-293)
While, like a haphazard phenomenon, a random one may be unpredictable in the short term (one cannot tell, for instance, if the next coin toss will turn up H or T), over many repetitions the distribution of outcomes of the phenomenon will take on a regular pattern.
The relative frequency of an event is the proportion of times it occurs. If there are many trials (many independent repetitions) of the phenomenon, the proportion of times a certain outcome occurs to the number of trials should approach the probability of getting that outcome.