1. Introduction: Putting a Number on Chance
You already know the word chance. When two friends want the same seat, someone says "let's toss a coin." When your name is in a lucky-draw bowl, you hope your chit comes out. You use chance every day.
But here is the thing. You feel chance, yet you have never measured it.
Think about tossing a one-rupee coin. Before it lands, can you say for sure it will be heads? No. Can you say it will be tails? Also no. It could go either way.
Stop scrolling. Try it in your head before reading on. When you toss a fair coin, how many different ways can it land?
Two ways. Heads up, or tails up. That's it. (We ignore it landing on its thin edge — that almost never happens.)
Now throw one die from a ludo box. How many ways can it land? The faces show 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So six ways.
Here is the idea we are chasing in this whole topic. We want to move from "maybe heads, maybe tails" to an actual number that tells you how likely something is. Not a feeling. A number.
By the end you will be able to look at a coin, a die, a bowl of chits, or a bag of marbles and write down, as a fraction, exactly how likely any result is.