| 释义 |
probability|prɒbəˈbɪlɪtɪ|
[ad. F. probabilité (14th c. in Littré), ad. L. probābilitātem, f. probābil-is probable: see -ity.]
1. a. The quality or fact of being probable; the appearance of truth, or likelihood of being realized, which any statement or event bears in the light of present evidence; likelihood.
1551T. Wilson Logike (1580) 30 b, In..gatheryng of coniectures that are doubtfull, when probabilitie onely and no assured knowledge, boulteth out the truthe of a matter. 1623J. Meade in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser. i. III. 150 Other reports there are, but without any probability of truth, and therefore I will not mention them. 1736Butler Anal. Introd. 3 Probability is the very Guide of Life. 1823J. Gillies tr. Aristotle's Rhet. ii. xxiii. 348 Truth and probability are the causes of assent. 1881Froude Short Stud. (1883) IV. ii. iii. 197 The soundest arguments..went no farther than to establish a probability.
b. in probability, † by probability: probably; considering what is probable. (Now always with all.)
a1602W. Perkins Cases Consc. (1619) 140 In probabilitie they could not bee either many or great. 1615W. Lawson Country Housew. Gard. (1626) 23 The compasse and roomth that each tree by probabilitie will take and fill. 1617Moryson Itin. ii. 62 The Lord Deputies going into the field,..in all probability could not be for some two moneths after. 1697Luttrell Brief Rel. (1857) IV. 202 Otherwise in probability they had fallen into the hands of the French. 1835Dickens Let. 14 Dec. (1965) I. 105, I shall not in all human probability be home before Wednesday Week. 1880Haughton Phys. Geog. ii. 50 These cliffs corresponding in all probability to ancient lines of faults.
2. a. An instance of the fact or condition described in 1; a probable event, circumstance, belief, etc.; something which, judged by present evidence, is likely to be true, to exist, or to happen.
1576Fleming Panopl. Epist. 375 Hee beginneth..with the infancie of Alexander..which ministred manifest and manifold probabilities of things which came afterwards to passe. 1620T. Granger Div. Logike 80 Many probabilities concurring preuaile much. 1769Junius Lett. xvi. (1820) 71 Arguments..have been drawn from inferences and probabilities. 1856Froude Hist. Eng. I. ii. 152 Wolsey's return to power was discussed openly as a probability. 1866Geo. Eliot F. Holt xl, You must not strain probabilities in that way.
b. pl. Probabilities of the weather; weather forecasts. U.S.
Old Probabilities, a humorous name for the chief signal-officer of the U.S. Signal Service Bureau.
1875O. W. Holmes Old Vol. Life, Crime & Automatism (1891) 327 No priest or soothsayer that ever lived could hold his own against Old Probabilities. 1886Pop. Sci. Monthly Aug. 546 The official publications embrace the ‘probabilities’ and the so-called ‘weather-maps’.
3. Math. As a measurable quantity: The amount of antecedent likelihood of a particular event as measured by the relative frequency of occurrence of events of the same kind in the whole course of experience; estimated by the ratio of the number of successful cases to the whole number of possible cases. Also, used of quantities which are derived logically by inferential or inductive reasoning, when mathematical concepts may be inapplicable or insufficient.
1718De Moivre (title) The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play. 1764T. Bayes in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. LIII. 376 The probability of any event is the ratio between the value at which an expectation depending on the happening of the event ought to be computed, and the value of the thing expected upon it's [sic] happening. 1788Rees Chambers' Cycl., Probability of an event, in the Doctrine of Chances, is greater or less according to the number of chances by which it may happen, compared with the whole number of chances by which it may either happen or fail. 1838De Morgan Ess. Probab. Pref., At the end of the seventeenth century, the theory of probabilities was contained in a few isolated problems, which had been solved by Pascal, Huyghens, James Bernoulli, and others. 1884tr. Lotze's Logic ii. ix. 369 For each draw the probability of a white ball being drawn would = 7/30, so that the probability of two whites being drawn in succession would = 7/30·7/30 = 49/900. 1892H. Goodwin in Contemp. Rev. Jan. 60 To speak of a certain possible event as having a probability of three to one..is to use language in a strictly defined sense. 1939Internat. Encycl. Unified Sci. I. vi. vi. 48 (heading) Probability as a unique logical relation. 1949Hutten & Reichenbach tr. H. Reichenbach's Theory of Probability p. v, Philosophical analysis was the starting point for a new mathematical construction of the calculus of probability. 1951S. S. Stevens Handbk. Exper. Psychol. 44/2 Russell once told his lecture audience that ‘probability is the most important concept in modern science, especially as nobody has the slightest notion what it means’. 1975A. R. White Modal Thinking iv. 68 The common philosophical confusion of probability with estimates of probability.
4. attrib. and Comb., as probability amplitude, probability calculus, probability field, probability function, probability generating function, probability judgement, probability measure, probability proposition, probability relation(ship), probability statement, probability value, probability wave; probability curve, a graph of a probability distribution; probability density, a probability distribution that is a continuous function; probability distribution, a function whose integral over any interval is the probability that the variate specified by it will lie within that interval; probability paper (see quot. 1933); probability sample, a sample whose members are chosen randomly; probability space, a space each point of which is an outcome and has a probability associated with it; probability theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with quantities having random distributions.
1936Physical Rev. XLIX. 520/2 Let as denote the probability amplitudes of states in which the neutron is free and in a state s. 1944H. Reichenbach Philos. Found. Quantum Mech. xvii. 84 Since the probabilities are derived always as the squares of complex functions, these latter functions are sometimes called probability amplitudes. 1970I. E. McCarthy Nuclear Reactions i. iii. 74 The probability amplitude description of a quantum process is a very simple one.
1940Mind XLIX. 265 While scientists apply the probability-calculus with great success to, e.g., microphysics, biology and vital statistics, philosophers are still not unanimous as to the right interpretation and ‘meaning’ of probability. 1971Times Lit. Suppl. 1 Oct. 1180/4 The mathematics of Xenakis's highly sophisticated techniques derived from the probability calculus are no more discernible by the human ear than are the mathematics of the rudimentary chance operations favoured by John Cage.
1893Probability curve [see normal a. 2 e]. 1914[see probability paper below]. 1964M. McLuhan Understanding Media v. 52 Some computer that translates our least gesture into a new probability curve.
1939H. Jeffreys Theory of Probability i. 24 We shall usually write this briefly P(dx{vb}p) = f′(x)dx, dx on the left meaning the proposition that x lies in a particular range dx. f′(x) is called the probability density. 1961Powell & Crasemann Quantum Mech. ii. 59 The fundamental postulate..states that the quantity ψ*ψ = {vb}ψ{vb}2 is to be interpreted as a probability density for a particle in the state ψ. More precisely,..in a measurement of the position of the particle, the probability P(r)dr of finding it in a volume element dr = dxdydz at a point r is proportional to {vb}ψ(r)2{vb}dr. 1968P. A. P. Moran Introd. Probability Theory ii. 68 When f(t) is continuous, f(t)dt can be regarded as the probability that X lies in the range (x, x + dt) when dt becomes small. f(t) is then known as the probability density of the distribution.
1937H. Cramé r Random Variables & Probability Distributions ii. 11 The use here made of the terms probability function and distribution function corresponds to the terminology of Kolmogoroff. 1944H. Reichenbach Philos. Found. Quantum Mech. xxiv. iii. The specification of these values is therefore replaced by the statement of their probability distributions. 1970G. A. & A. G. Theodorson Mod. Dict. Sociol. 314 A probability distribution gives the probable frequency of occurrence of each category or class interval..of a given variable.
1940Mind XLIX. 272 The definition of randomness as ‘Nachwirkungsfreiheit’ is wholly inadequate for the purpose of characterising a probability-field. 1965R. C. Jeffrey Logic of Decision vii. 103 A probability field is a collection of propositions which contains the denial of any proposition that it contains, and which contains the conjunction and the disjunction of any pair of propositions that it contains.
1906Acta Univ. Lundensis I. v. 8 The values of the probability function ϕ(x) are most conveniently tabulated by Sheppard. 1974H. Frank Introd. Probability & Statistics ii. 40 A probability function is defined as a function Y = f(X) such that X is a random variable and Y is the set of probabilities associated with X.
1949Jrnl. R. Statistical Soc. B. XI. 217 The recurrence relation for the probability-generating function Πr + 1(z) for the entire population in the r + 1th generation is obtained by substituting G(z) for z in Πr (z). 1968P. A. P. Moran Introd. Probability Theory ii. 79 We consider the probability generating function obtained by multiplying (2.62) by zk and summing over the possible values.
1914C. D. Broad Perception ii. 150 The correct probability is always that relative to the knowledge of the person who makes the probability-judgment. 1934Philos. Rev. XLIII. 133 The given experience of the moment of knowing is the basis of a probability-judgment concerning the experience. 1954L. J. Savage Found. Statistics iii. 33 Let me say precisely what is meant..by a probability measure. 1971Sci. Amer. Aug. 95/1 Mathematical probability is based on a special function that assigns to each subset A of a given set Ω a positive real number that represents the probability that a point selected ‘at random’ from the set Ω will actually be in A. This function is called a ‘probability measure’ on the set Ω, and we shall denote it by m.
1914A. Hazen in Trans. Amer. Soc. Civil Engineers LXXVII. 1549 Probability Paper.—The practical difficulty with the plotting of Fig. 1 is the great curvature of the lines showing the required storage. This difficulty is so great as to make the method unsatisfactory in most cases; but it has been removed by using paper ruled with lines spaced in accordance with a probability curve, or, as it is otherwise called, the normal law of error. 1933Med. Res. Council Special Rep. Ser. No. 183. 9 A special form of graph paper known as ‘probability paper’ has been prepared, on which the ordinates represent a scale of percentages so spaced that the actual distances on the paper are proportional to the corresponding values of the normal equivalent deviation. On ‘logarithmic probability paper’ the scale of ordinates is identical with that on ordinary probability paper, but the scale of abscissae is logarithmic. 1958E. J. Gumbel Statistics of Extremes i. 29 If the theory holds, the observations plotted on probability paper ought to be scattered closely about the straight line.
1914C. D. Broad Perception ii. 150 This is not as much objectivity as is wanted for probability-propositions. 1922tr. Wittgenstein's Tractatus 111 There is no special object peculiar to probability propositions.
1921J. M. Keynes Treat. Probability i. 4 If a knowledge of h justifies a rational belief in a of degree α, we say that there is a probability-relation of degree α between a and h. 1965P. Caws Philos. of Sci. xxxiv. 261 If premise and conclusion are both known, some probability relation may be established between them.
1955O. Klein in W. Pauli Niels Bohr 102 The basic ideas of quantum theory, where the causal relationship between events is replaced by a probability relationship. 1955F. C. Mills Statistical Methods (ed. 3) xix. 659 A probability sample is one for which the inclusion or exclusion of any individual element of the population depends on the application of probability methods, not on personal judgment, and which is so designed and drawn that the probability of inclusion of any individual element is known. 1972Jrnl. Social Psychol. LXXXVIII. 208 Field interviewers..administered the Rokeach Value Survey to a national probability sample of 1489 American adults.
1968J. B. Johnston et al. Sets, Functions, & Probability v. 163 We shall now describe how a probability space can be associated with certain chance phenomena in the real world. 1975I. Stewart Concepts Mod. Math. xvii. 247 Axiomatic probability theory works entirely in terms of probability spaces.
1930J. Laird Knowl., Belief & Opinion xvii. 376 According to this view, probability-statements are statements of proportions in very large series. 1939E. Nagel Princ. Theory of Probability iv. 23 Probability statements are on a par with statements which specify the density of a substance; they are not formulations of the degree of our ignorance or uncertainty. 1941Mind L. 48, I shall here refer to the contrast between two very well-known types of probability-theory. 1962Listener 15 Nov. 793/1 In psychological research, too, probability theory plays an essential part because many of the variables can be measured only approximately. 1974P. Erdman Silver Bears ii. 16 At M.I.T...he had become fascinated with the probability theories of..John von Neumann and Oskar Morganstern [sic].
1922W. E. Johnson Logic II. xi. 251 Mill's position is paradoxical, since he apparently attributes a higher probability-value to a law, merely on the ground of its width. 1940Mind XLIX. 267 From a purely mathematical point of view there would be no obstacle to the choice of series of the above kind as fields of measurement for probability-values. 1942Electronic Engin. XV. 149/1 The term wave is commonly used in a very wide sense, to cover almost everything from a heat wave to the probability waves of modern physics. 1956E. H. Hutten Lang. Mod. Physics v. 186 Physicists have sometimes spoken of the ‘probability wave’; but this phrase must not be taken literally. |