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In probability theory, the rule of succession is a formula introduced in the 18th century by Pierre-Simon Laplace in the course of treating the sunrise problem. [1] The formula is still used, particularly to estimate underlying probabilities when there are few observations or events that have not been observed to occur at all in (finite) sample data.
Formally, a multivariate random variable is a column vector = (, …,) (or its transpose, which is a row vector) whose components are random variables on the probability space (,,), where is the sample space, is the sigma-algebra (the collection of all events), and is the probability measure (a function returning each event's probability).
The measurable space and the probability measure arise from the random variables and expectations by means of well-known representation theorems of analysis. One of the important features of the algebraic approach is that apparently infinite-dimensional probability distributions are not harder to formalize than finite-dimensional ones.
The term law of total probability is sometimes taken to mean the law of alternatives, which is a special case of the law of total probability applying to discrete random variables. [ citation needed ] One author uses the terminology of the "Rule of Average Conditional Probabilities", [ 4 ] while another refers to it as the "continuous law of ...
That is, the probability function f(x) lies between zero and one for every value of x in the sample space Ω, and the sum of f(x) over all values x in the sample space Ω is equal to 1. An event is defined as any subset of the sample space . The probability of the event is defined as
In fact, the discrete case (although without the restriction to probability measures) is the first step in proving the general measure-theoretic formulation, as the general version follows therefrom by an application of the monotone convergence theorem. [7] Without any major changes, the result can also be formulated in the setting of outer ...
Cox's theorem, named after the physicist Richard Threlkeld Cox, is a derivation of the laws of probability theory from a certain set of postulates. [1] [2] This derivation justifies the so-called "logical" interpretation of probability, as the laws of probability derived by Cox's theorem are applicable to any proposition.
This rule allows one to express a joint probability in terms of only conditional probabilities. [4] The rule is notably used in the context of discrete stochastic processes and in applications, e.g. the study of Bayesian networks, which describe a probability distribution in terms of conditional probabilities.