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A sample space is usually denoted using set notation, and the possible ordered outcomes, or sample points, [5] are listed as elements in the set. It is common to refer to a sample space by the labels S, Ω, or U (for "universal set"). The elements of a sample space may be numbers, words, letters, or symbols.
An event space, which is a set of events, , an event being a set of outcomes in the sample space. A probability function , P {\displaystyle P} , which assigns, to each event in the event space, a probability , which is a number between 0 and 1 (inclusive).
Using for heads and for tails, the sample space of a coin is defined as: = {,} The event space for a coin includes all sets of outcomes from the sample space which can be assigned a probability, which is the full power set. Thus, the event space is defined as:
A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin. Since the coin is fair, the two outcomes ("heads" and "tails") are both equally probable; the probability of "heads" equals the probability of "tails"; and since no other outcomes are possible, the probability of either "heads" or "tails" is 1/2 (which could also be written as 0.5 or 50%).
Typically, when the sample space is finite, any subset of the sample space is an event (that is, all elements of the power set of the sample space are defined as events). However, this approach does not work well in cases where the sample space is uncountably infinite (most notably when the outcome must be some real number).
The sample space may be any set: a set of real numbers, a set of descriptive labels, a set of vectors, a set of arbitrary non-numerical values, etc. For example, the sample space of a coin flip could be Ω = {"heads", "tails" }. To define probability distributions for the specific case of random variables (so the sample space can be seen as a ...
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A random experiment is described or modeled by a mathematical construct known as a probability space. A probability space is constructed and defined with a specific kind of experiment or trial in mind. A mathematical description of an experiment consists of three parts: A sample space, Ω (or S), which is the set of all possible outcomes.