What is the difference between probability and possibility?
In: Mathematics
Possibility is anything that could happen.
Probability is how likely it is that a certain outcome happens.
Let’s say we flip one trillion coins.
The easy way to describe probability is that:
Many of those coin flips result in heads.
Many of those coin flips result in tails.
However many coins landed heads (or tails) out of how many flips (one trillion) is the probability.
The possibility is anything that could have happened in those coin flips.
Heads, tails, coin lands perfectly flat, coin getting wedged into the floor sideways, coin hits the floor and rolls out of sight to never be found again, someone runs by and grabs the coin out of the air. Imagine anything (increasingly absurd?), as a possibility.
While some of the (more absurd?) outcomes could (measurably) happen, the chances will likely indicate that the probability of those things happening is extremely low. It could be so low that it may not be considered rational to incorporate it into the possible outcomes, as it could include almost anything you could imagine. In this case, we would consider the two options to be heads or tales, and the other outcomes are too insignificant when measured against the heads/tails outcome.
There is also the law of large numbers that often gets applied to probability, which basically says that the closer to infinite attempts we should also see the actual measured outcomes fall more in line with the probabilities. Ex: if we flipped infinite coins. We would expect heads and tails to be very similar in number of outcomes.
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