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Chance is an informal concept, sometimes meaning probability, sometimes meaning randomness. Probability is a formal mathematical concept expressed in its most simple form as dependent probability, which is a number between zero and one that represents the likelihood that, for example, a person with one property will have another property. Thus the probability ofa live birth being female is a dependent probability in which the two properties are live birth and female. Probabilities may also be assigned to beliefs. It is commonly asserted that social processes are probabilistic and that causal relations in social sciences are probabilistic. This means that the causal relationships or processes are not deterministic. However, it is only very infrequently that dependent probabilities can be assigned to non-deterministic processes or causal relations. Thus actual numerical probabilities generally play no formal role in sociological theories.
The primary role of probability ideas is in relation to statistics, and generally probability usages in social statistics rely, confusingly, on notions of error. The term error in the social sciences is not used only for errors of observation but more broadly, for the distribution of observation that results from actual non-deterministic, entangled, causal processes. Thus ”error” would appear whether or not there was error of observation at all. The standard method of modeling causal relations in the social sciences uses linear equations which do not contain probabilities and treat indeterminacy as error. A close relationship with relatively little variation around the line defined by the equation produces a high correlation while a relationship in which there is more variation produces a low correlation. Models can be built containing large sets of such relationships and interpreted in terms of causation.
Bibliography:
- Freedman, D. A. (2005) Statistical Models: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, New York.
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