Tree diagram (probability theory)

Part of a series on statistics
Probability theory
Probability Axioms Determinism System Indeterminism Randomness
Probability space Sample space Event Collectively exhaustive events Elementary event Mutual exclusivity Outcome Singleton Experiment Bernoulli trial Probability distribution Bernoulli distribution Binomial distribution Exponential distribution Normal distribution Pareto distribution Poisson distribution Probability measure Random variable Bernoulli process Continuous or discrete Expected value Variance Markov chain Observed value Random walk Stochastic process
Complementary event Joint probability Marginal probability Conditional probability
Independence Conditional independence Law of total probability Law of large numbers Bayes' theorem Boole's inequality
Venn diagram Tree diagram
v t e

In probability theory, a tree diagram may be used to represent a probability space.

A tree diagram may represent a series of independent events (such as a set of coin flips) or conditional probabilities (such as drawing cards from a deck, without replacing the cards). Each node on the diagram represents an event and is associated with the probability of that event. The root node represents the certain event and therefore has probability 1. Each set of sibling nodes represents an exclusive and exhaustive partition of the parent event.

The probability associated with a node is the chance of that event occurring after the parent event occurs. The probability that the series of events leading to a particular node will occur is equal to the product of that node and its parents' probabilities.

See also

• Decision tree
• Markov chain

Notes

References

• Charles Henry Brase, Corrinne Pellillo Brase: Understanding Basic Statistics. Cengage Learning, 2012, ISBN 9781133713890, pp. 205–208 (online copy at Google)

External links

• Media related to Probability trees at Wikimedia Commons
• tree diagrams - examples and applications

Tree Diagrams