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CHANCE (through the O. Fr. cheance, f...

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 832 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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CHANCE (through the O. Fr. cheance, from the See also:Late See also:Lat. cadentia, things happening, from cadere, to fall out, happen; cf. " See also:case ")  , an See also:accident or event, a phenomenon which has no apparent or discoverable cause; hence an event which has not been expected, a piece of See also:good or See also:bad See also:fortune . From the popular See also:idea that anything of which no assignable cause is known has therefore no cause, See also:chance (Gr . Tbxn) was regarded as having a substantial See also:objective existence, being itself the source of such uncaused phenomena . For the philosophic theories See also:relating to this subject see See also:ACCIDENTALISM . " Chance," in the theory of See also:probability, is used in two ways . In the stricter, or mathematical usage, it is synonymous with probability; i.e. if a particular event may occur in n ways in an aggregate of p events, then the " chance " of the particular event occurring is given by the fraction n/p . In the second usage, the "chance" is regarded as the ratio of the number of ways which a particular event may occur to the number of ways in which it may not occur; mathematically expressed, this chance is n/(p-n) (see PROBABILITY) . In the See also:English See also:law relating to gaming and wagering a distinction is See also:drawn between See also:games of chance and games of skill (see GAMING AND WAGERING) .

End of Article: CHANCE (through the O. Fr. cheance, from the Late Lat. cadentia, things happening, from cadere, to fall out, happen; cf. " case ")
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