The Logic of Chance, 3rd edition / An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, With Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science and to Statistics

by John Venn

§ 1. There is a term of frequent occurrence in treatises on Probability, and which we have already had repeated occasion to employ, viz.

the designation random applied to an event, as in the expression ‘a random distribution’. The scientific conception involved in the correct use of this term is, I apprehend, nothing more than that of aggregate order and individual irregularity (or apparent irregularity), which has been already described in the preceding chapters. A brief discussion of the requisites in this scientific conception, and in particular of the nature and some of the reasons for the departure from the popular conception, may serve to clear up some of the principal remaining difficulties which attend this part of our subject.

The original,[1] and still popular, signification of the term is of course widely different from the scientific. What it looks to is the origin, not the results, of the random performance, and it has reference rather to the single action than to a group or series of actions. Thus, when a man draws a bow ‘at a venture’, or ‘at random’, we mean only to point out the aimless character of the performance; we are contrasting it with the definite intention to hit a certain mark. But it is none the less true, as already pointed out, that we can only apply processes of inference to such performances as these when we regard them as being capable of frequent, or rather of indefinitely extended repetition.

Begin with an illustration. Perhaps the best typical example that we can give of the scientific meaning of random distribution is afforded by the arrangement of the drops of rain in a shower. No one can give a guess whereabouts at any instant a drop will fall, but we know that if we put out a sheet of paper it will gradually become uniformly spotted over; and that if we were to mark out any two equal areas on the paper these would gradually tend to be struck equally often.

§ 2. I. Any attempt to draw inferences from the assumption of random arrangement must postulate the occurrence of this particular state of things at some stage or other. But there is often considerable difficulty, leading occasionally to some arbitrariness, in deciding the particular stage at which it ought to be introduced.

(1) Thus, in many of the problems discussed by mathematicians, we look as entirely to the results obtained, and think as little of the actual process by which they are obtained, as when we are regarding the arrangement of the drops of rain. A simple example of this kind would be the following. A pawn, diameter of base one inch, is placed at random on a chess-board, the diameter of the squares of which is one inch and a quarter: find the chance that its base shall lie across one of the intersecting lines. Here we may imagine the pawns to be so to say rained down vertically upon the board, and the question is to find the ultimate proportion of those which meet a boundary line to the total of those which fall. The problem therefore becomes a merely geometrical one, viz.

to determine the ratio of a certain area on the board to the whole area. The determination of this ratio is all that the mathematician ever takes into account.

Now take the following. A straight brittle rod is broken at random in two places: find the chance that the pieces can make a triangle.[2] Since the only condition for making a triangle with three straight lines is that each two shall be greater than the third, the problem seems to involve the same general conception as in the former case. We must conceive such rods breaking at one pair of spots after another,—no one can tell precisely where,—but showing the same ultimate tendency to distribute these spots throughout the whole length uniformly. As in the last case, the mathematician thinks of nothing but this final result, and pays no heed to the process by which it may be brought about. Accordingly the problem is again reduced to one of mensuration, though of a somewhat more complicated character.

§ 3. (2) In another class of cases we have to contemplate an intermediate process rather than a final result; but the same conception has to be introduced here, though it is now applied to the former stage, and in consequence will not in general apply to the latter.

For instance: a shot is fired at random from a gun whose maximum range (i.e.