Animations in Probability Theory

Animations can demonstrate the certainty in uncertainty.

Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with analysis of random phenomena. The central objects of probability theory are random variables, stochastic processes, and events: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic events or measured quantities that may either be single occurrences or evolve over time in an apparently random fashion. Although an individual coin toss or the roll of a die is a random event, if repeated many times the sequence of random events will exhibit certain statistical patterns, which can be studied and predicted. Two representative mathematical results describing such patterns are the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.

As a mathematical foundation for statistics, probability theory is essential to many human activities that involve quantitative analysis of large sets of data. Methods of probability theory also apply to description of complex systems given only partial knowledge of their state, as in statistical mechanics. A great discovery of twentieth century physics was the probabilistic nature of physical phenomena at atomic scales, described in quantum mechanics.

As probability theory is closely related to randomness, we may use animations to demonstrate this kind of randomness based on random numbers. For example, we can generate a series of random numbers in a probability experiment and create a plot to illustrate the result of this experiment; by repeating this step over and over again, we can probably observe interesting phenomena in the changes of animation frames.