<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<record version="7" id="1051">
 <title>Bayes' theorem</title>
 <name>BayesTheorem</name>
 <created>2001-12-03 23:52:05</created>
 <modified>2009-04-02 15:01:41</modified>
 <type>Theorem</type>
 <creator id="2" name="akrowne"/>
 <author id="2" name="akrowne"/>
 <classification>
	<category scheme="msc" code="60-00"/>
	<category scheme="msc" code="62A01"/>
 </classification>
 <synonyms>
	<synonym concept="Bayes' theorem" alias="Bayes' Rule"/>
 </synonyms>
 <related>
	<object name="ConditionalProbability"/>
 </related>
 <keywords>
	<term>statistics</term>
	<term>Bayes</term>
 </keywords>
 <preamble>\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{xypic}</preamble>
 <content>\PMlinkescapephrase{states}

Let $(A_n)$ be a sequence of mutually exclusive events whose \PMlinkname{union}{Union} is the sample space and let $E$ be any event.  All of the events have nonzero probability ($P(E) &gt; 0$ and $P(A_n) &gt; 0$ for all $n$).  Bayes' Theorem states

$$ P(A_j|E) = \frac{P(A_j)P(E|A_j)}{\sum_i P(A_i)P(E|A_i)} $$

for any $A_j \in (A_n)$.

A simpler formulation is:

$$ P(A|B) = \frac{P(B|A)P(A)}{P(B)} $$

For two events, $A$ and $B$ (also with nonzero probability).  

\begin{thebibliography}{3}
\bibitem{Milton} Milton, J.S., Arnold, Jesse C., \textsl{Introduction to Probability and Statistics: Principles and Applications for Engineering and the Computing Sciences}, McGraw Hill, 1995.
\end{thebibliography}</content>
</record>
