Mutually Exclusive Events
In layperson's terms, two events are 'mutually exclusive' if they cannot occur at the same time. An example is tossing a coin once, which can result in either heads or tails, but not both.
In the coin-tossing example, both outcomes are collectively exhaustive, which means that at least one of the outcomes must happen, so these two possibilities together exhaust all the possibilities. However, not all mutually exclusive events are collectively exhaustive. For example, the outcomes 1 and 4 of a single roll of a six-sided die are mutually exclusive (cannot both happen) but not collectively exhaustive (there are other possible outcomes; 2,3,5,6).
Read more about Mutually Exclusive Events: Logic, Probability, Statistics
Famous quotes containing the words mutually exclusive, mutually, exclusive and/or events:
“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)