PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION

Ordinarily speaking  the probability  of an event  denotes the  likelihood  of its happening. The  value of  probability ranges between  0  an 1. If an  event is certain  to happen it probability  would  be i and if it is  p certain that the  event would not  take place then the  probability of its happening is 0. Ordinarily in social  science the  probability of the happening of an event is rarely  1 or 0. The reason is that  in social   sciences  we deal with situation where  there is always as element of uncertainty about  the happening  or not  happening of  an event. For this  reason  the probability  of the  events  is somewhere  between  0 and 1.

The general  rule of the happening  of an event is  that if an event  can happen  in  ways  and fail to  happen in n ways  them the probability  of the  happening of the vent is  given by.

  P = m / m+ n or

P= Number of cases favourable to  the occurrence of the event / total number  of mutually  exclusive  and exhaustive cases

Odds  in favour of the  occurrence of the event

= m/n= Number of cases favourable to  the occurrence of the event/ the number  of cases  against  the occurrence  of the event

Odds against  the occurrence  of the event

m/n=  The  number  of cases  against  the occurrence of the event/ the number of cases  favourable to  the occurrence of the even.