Bernoulli trial

Bernoulli trial

n. Statistics

An experiment having only two possible outcomes, usually denoted success and failure, with the properties that the probability of occurrence of each outcome is the same in each trial and the occurrence of one excludes the occurrence of the other in any given trial.

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[After Jakob Bernoulli.]

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Bernoulli trial

A random event in which one of two possible outcomes can occur (usually denoted success or failure), with the properties that the probability of each outcome is the same in each trial and that the outcome of each trial is independent of the outcomes of the other trials. If the probability of success is p, the probability of failure is 1 - p. The flip of a coin is a Bernoulli trial (where the probability of both success and failure is 0.5), as is the roll of a die (where success might be arbitrarily defined as rolling a six and failure as rolling any other number, with the probability of success being 0.167 and the probability of failure 0.833).