Home Practice
For learners and parents For teachers and schools
Textbooks
Full catalogue
Leaderboards
Learners Leaderboard Classes/Grades Leaderboard Schools Leaderboard
Pricing Support
Help centre Contact us
Log in

We think you are located in United States. Is this correct?

Introduction

Test yourself now

High marks in science are the key to your success and future plans. Test yourself and learn more on Siyavula Practice.

Sign up and test yourself

Chapter 26: Probability

26.1 Introduction

We can play games using coins and dice to help us to understand probability better. These games are based on random events, so they are a useful way to learn how to use probabilities to predict events.

Emanuel Jöbstl und Martin Thoma, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

We use probability to describe uncertain events. When your favourite sports team plays a game, you don’t know whether they will win or not. When the weatherman says that there is a \(30 \%\) chance of rain tomorrow, your swimming gala may or may not get cancelled. There is some level of uncertainty in every event that occurs around us, and in every decision that we make.

You will see in this chapter that all of these uncertainties can be described using the rules of probability, and that we can draw conclusions about uncertain things.