USES OF MATHEMATICS PROBABILITY 1

1. Use of probability in medicine/medical:

Probability rapidly used in various fields of modern science. Most notably, it is

used in medicine. Sir William Osler (2019) succinctly placed, “Medicine is a science of

uncertainty and an art of probability.” As a field, Medicine is hard to be sure about

anything. Therefore, the probability is the best measure in this case. Diagnosing disease,

getting injuries, chances of developing diseases like cancer, the spread of an epidemic at

any time, or genetics problems are the significant areas in medicine that involve probability

primarily. In medicine, probability is commonly used in both survey data analysis and

experimental data analysis (Probability Science in medicine and physics, 2019).

Headache Example

A woman in her thirties visited a doctor for headache. What she ended up having

as her diagnosis? The answer to the question is one of the three possibilities that the

headache specialist examined. The three probabilities are either she can have a migraine,

or headache due to overused medicine or can have anything else reason like tension, tumor,

sinus, etc. Possibility of occurring one of the three anchors depends on what a patient has

to say or examined. The woman was asked multiple questions based on these three possible

outcomes of diagnosing. If response is positive to any of these queries, her headache must

fall into that anchor. By the end, the doctor might diagnose nearly 90 – 95% of the disease.

The diagnose is not 100% in any case, but it narrows down to some concrete list that that

permit doctor and patient to have ground to make a reasonable choice (A Headache

Example, 2019).

2. Probability use in economics:

An economist considers life as a stochastic process. Every day is based on random

events and chances of occurring particular event is alike. Whether it is about how many
USES OF MATHEMATICS PROBABILITY 2

red lights, a car stops or can crash occurs, passing the red light. Similarly, the productivity

of a company can have random shocks every time and chances of occurring shock are

equal, that is, optimizing investment. Therefore, probability plays a vital role in the

economics and finance field. It also helps to shape monetary and fiscal policies. It is

effectively used in the development of Robust method for empirical analysis. In economic

analysis, the work of probability is to provide various pieces of economic data generated

by a random process (Brown & Wong, 2015).

Intel Stock Example

A Lady named Carol has 100 shares of Intel Stock. Addition to this, she has many

thousands of dollars in her bank. For optimal investment, Carol has to decide one of the

three anchor probabilities. She should either sell some of her Intel stock or buy more, or

leave her portfolio as it is. There is one of three choices to be made. There will be a unique

range of price at which Carol will not buy or sell her stock. Price higher than the unique

range makes to sell her stock and lower than the unique range makes her to buy the new

stock for optimizing the investment. Set of priors that is Carol’s beliefs are multiple and

are different at different times (Saas, 2019).

USES OF MATHEMATICS PROBABILITY 3

References:

Brown, S., & Wong, W. (2015). Probability and Statistics with Applications in Finance and

Economics. The Scientific World Journal, 2015, 1-2. doi: 10.1155/2015/618785

Probability Science in medicine and physics. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.new-science-

theory.com/probability-science.php

Saas. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~apostlew/paper/pdf/Probabilities.pdf

Using Probability in Medical Diagnosis: A Headache Example. (2019). Retrieved from

https://www.cordingleyneurology.com/probabilitydiagnosis.html

William Osler Quotes - BrainyQuote. (2019). Retrieved from

https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/william_osler