What is theoretical probability?

• A. The probability derived from actual experiments.
• B. The ratio of favorable outcomes to total outcomes.
• C. The probability calculated based on possible outcomes without conducting experiments.
• D. The probability that an event will never occur.

Answer: (C)

The idea being tested is predicting how likely something is by reasoning about the possible outcomes in a model, without doing any experiments. Theoretical probability is the probability calculated based on possible outcomes without conducting experiments, using a sample space of equally likely outcomes to predict the chance of an event before any trials. For example, with a fair die, there are six equally likely outcomes, so the probability of rolling a 4 is 1/6. This approach contrasts with experimental probability, which comes from actually performing trials and observing frequencies. The notion of an event never occurring would give a probability of zero, but that’s a specific case and not the general idea of theoretical probability.