Bernoulli trial

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In the theory of probability and statistics, a Bernoulli trial (or binomial trial) is a random experiment with exactly two possible outcomes, "success" and "failure". It is named after Jacob Bernoulli, a 17th-century Swiss mathematician, who analyzed them in his Ars Conjectandi (1713). The mathematical formalization and advanced formulation of the Bernoulli trial is known as the Bernoulli process. Since a Bernoulli trial has only two possible outcomes, it can be framed as a "yes or no" question. For example: Is the top card of a shuffled deck an ace? Was the newborn child a girl? (See human sex ratio.) Success and failure are in this context labels for the two outcomes, and should not be construed literally or as value judgments. More generally, given any probability space, for any event (set of outcomes), one can define a Bernoulli trial according to whether the event occurred or not (event or complementary event). Examples of Bernoulli trials include: Flipping a coin. In this context...

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