Math 143 C/E, Spring 2001
IPS Reading Questions
Chapter 4, Section 1 (pp. 288-293)



  1. The authors seem unwilling to consider a haphazard phenomenon and a random as the same thing. What, in their view, makes a random phenomenon distinctive?

    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.

  2. Explain in your own words the authors' definition of probability as long-term relative frequency.

    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.