Lecture 02: Fundamentals of Probability

MIT 14.310x Data Analysis for Social Scientists, Spring 2023
Instructor: Sara Ellison

In this lecture, Sara Ellison begins the discussion of probability, discussing the fundamentals, conditional probability, and independence.

License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

[DistortedV]

Great lecture Sara, I’m an ML guy but needed this refresher Sunday morning

[shitabdaiyanakash]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

49:50 *🔄 Conditional probability redefines both numerator and denominator based on new information.*
50:18 *🔄 If two events are independent, the probability of one event given the other is the same as its standalone probability.*
51:14 *↔️ Independence implies that the occurrence of one event does not affect the probability of the other.*
51:43 *🇺🇸 The dynamics between primaries and general elections in American politics provide a fertile ground for examples in probability.*
53:02 *🗳️ Conditional probability is used to analyze political candidates' chances of winning the nomination and the general election.*
54:27 *📊 High nomination probability does not necessarily translate to high general election win probability.*
55:26 *📈 The probability of a Republican win is calculated using the principle of mutually exclusive and exhaustive events.*
57:11 *🎲 Introduction to Bayes' theorem, which is foundational for Bayesian analysis.*
58:29 *🧮 Bayes' theorem connects the probability of events A and B, showing how to update beliefs with new evidence.*
01:01:17 *🤔 Bayes' theorem's power is demonstrated through its application to real-world scenarios, like medical testing for rare conditions.*

Made with HARPA AI

[BELLAROSE]

Love these people …. Imagine what this extraordinary human-being knows…. Thank you for sharing this for free.. 39!*2, matrix for power-dance(ball)? then apply square-dancing^2? Whatever that even suggest ?

[ElephantDragonWolf]

This is actually awesome. Huh, nice!!

[accountaccount]

So Prof Ellison made a mistake on the slide at arouind 32 minutes. 11 choose 2 is not 66. it is 55. the answer should be 30/55 or 5/11.

[adityabhanage]

Hey, In pizza topping question I guess (11 2) is 55 which gives answer as 6/11. Otherwise the question did gave me cravings for it and I ended up ordering one tonight!

[endgamefond]

I like the way she teaches. I really like the note. However, I am not good at maths. I miss an lot of points (like basic terms for the lessons). I wish she explained these. I really wish the lecture treated us as we are coming from "non-common" background. We are not MIT students (most of us) so we dont have minimum background for the lessons. I hope this can be taken as consideration for next lectures.

[TheVisaTEAM]

I can’t deal with the constant tongue clicking, very distracting.