Definition of Mutually Exclusive Events
Mutually exclusive events are ones in which one event happening means that another cannot happen. While mutually exclusive events are used often in scientific theories, they also play a part in law and business. As a result, understanding mutually exclusive events is can be important for a variety of disciplines.
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Definition
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A mutually exclusive event is one in which the acceptance of one alternative automatically excludes other, possible alternatives. A common example of a mutually exclusive event is a coin flip. Either the coin will come up heads or tails. Since the coin coming up heads means that it will not come up tails, that makes the coin flip a mutually exclusive event. It is either will be one side or the other, it cannot be both.
Law
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The field of law is highly conscious of mutually exclusive events. While this is true of many crimes, a commonplace scenario would be receiving a speeding ticket. Either the person was exceeding the speed limit, or they were not. This is a simple example, but often the entire basis of guilt or innocence is based on a mutually exclusive event, hence the importance of an alibi. If it can be proven a defendant was doing something else at the time of the crime then they cannot be guilty of the crime (in many cases).
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Math
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The mathematical definition of mutually exclusive events is a little more involved. According to mathematics, mutually exclusive events are when two or more events cannot occur at the same time, and the sum of their individual probabilities is the chance of the event occurring at all. This adds one more element to the definition, as either one or another event must happen, but both events cannot happen at the same time.
Formula
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The mathematical formula for determining the probability of mutually exclusive events is P(A U B) = P(A) + P(B). Spoken out loud the formula is "if A and B are mutually exclusive events, then the probability of A or B occurring is equal to the probability of event A plus the probability of event B."
Probability
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Mutually exclusive events are one of the keystones of probability. Probability is the chance that a certain event will happen a certain amount of the time. For instance, flipping a coin is a mutually exclusive event that has a 50 percent probability--about half the time it will be heads, about half the time it will be tails.
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