Events such as tossing a head or a tail with a coin, drawing a Queen or a Jack from a pack of cards, throwing an even or a odd number with a dice are all mutually exclusive events. Here, the occurrence of an event rules out the happening of all the other events in the same experiment, i.e., If we toss a coin, we can never get a head or a tail in the same toss.
Probability (head) =\(\frac{1}{2}\) , Probability (tail) =\(\frac{1}{2}\)
Also, Probability (head) + Probability (tail) = \(\frac{1}{2}\) + \(\frac{1}{2}\) = 1
Such events are also called exhaustive events, because there are no other possibilities and their probabilities always add up to 1.
An example of events that are not mutually exclusive would be throwing a prime number or an odd number with a dice. There are two prime number 3 and 5 which are also odd numbers.
