In probability and statistics, an urn problem is an idealized mental exercise in which some objects of real interest (such as atoms, people, cars, etc.) are represented as colored balls in an urn or other container. One pretends to draw (remove) one or more balls from the urn; the goal is to determine the probability of drawing one color or another, or some other properties. A key parameter is whether each ball is returned to the urn after each draw.
An urn model is either a set of probabilities that describe events within an urn problem, or it is a probability distribution, or a family of such distributions, of random variables associated with urn problems.
Read more about Urn Problem: Basic Urn Model, Examples of Urn Problems, Historical Remarks
Famous quotes containing the word problem:
“A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moveover, in a word—‘Everything.’”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)