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Statistics for Decision- Making in Business - Maricopa Community ...

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This amount looks very good! In fact, on average, the company received<br />

. This customer is def<strong>in</strong>itely profitable to the company, <strong>in</strong> the long-run. Of course,<br />

we know that an accident could occur the first year, <strong>in</strong> which an $800 loss would be <strong>in</strong>curred<br />

right away.<br />

Notice what we really did here. We took the sum of the amounts and divided by 100:<br />

( )<br />

By properties of a common denom<strong>in</strong>ator we can write:<br />

( ) ( )<br />

( ) ( )<br />

( ) ( )<br />

In reality, we multiplied each monetary value by its respective probability. This idea is<br />

known as expected value, s<strong>in</strong>ce it is what we expect to happen <strong>in</strong> the long-run.<br />

Expected Value and Random Variable<br />

Expected value is the expected, or average, quantity that should occur <strong>in</strong> the long-run,<br />

provided that each quantity occurs with a certa<strong>in</strong> probability.<br />

Suppose there are quantities, , each of which occurs with a certa<strong>in</strong><br />

probability, , respectively, then the expected value, denoted , - is<br />

, -<br />

A capital , , is used to denote what is called a discrete random variable, a variable that<br />

takes on one of (a natural number of) values with a certa<strong>in</strong> probability. This value is<br />

def<strong>in</strong>ed by what it measures <strong>in</strong> the given situation.<br />

Importantly,<br />

, that is, we must account <strong>for</strong> 100% of all possible<br />

outcomes <strong>in</strong> order <strong>for</strong> the expected value to be mean<strong>in</strong>gful.<br />

<strong>Statistics</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Decision</strong>-<strong>Mak<strong>in</strong>g</strong> <strong>in</strong> Bus<strong>in</strong>ess © Milos Podmanik Page 136

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