The landscape of probability
We all know that the probability of some condition can lie anywhere between a sure thing (which we represent as a probability of 1) and a flat-out impossibility (0). But it turns out there are several other points of interest along the way. Let's take a tour. When we say that something is a sure thing, we mean it is bound to be so. For example, the probability that a bachelor is unmarried is 1. This is a logical sure thing because, by the definition of 'bachelor', it couldn't be otherwise. (It could also be called an apodictic sure thing, however that's pretty much guaranteed to sound pretentious—but I'm getting ahead of myself.) Now consider the statement that an object with a positive electrical charge is attracted to an object with a negative electrical charge. This is a physical sure thing : though there may be a universe where this isn't true, it is true in ours. Now let's move from sure things to things that are pretty much guaranteed . For ex...