How do you work out relative frequency?
Some probabilities cannot be calculated by just looking at the situation. For example, you cannot work out the probability of winning a football match by assuming that win, lose and draw are equally likely, but we can look at previous results in similar matches and use these results to estimate the probability of winning. Example 1 The Bumbleton and Stickton village football teams have played each other 50 times. Bumbleton have won 10 times, Stickton have won 35 times, and the teams have drawn 5 times. We want to estimate the probability that Stickton will win the next match. So far, Stickton have won 35 out of the 50 matches. We can write this as a fraction, which is 35/50 = 7/10. This fraction isn’t the probability of Stickton winning, but it is an estimate of that probability. We say that the relative frequency of Stickton winning is 7/10.
