Probabilities of Different Orders

Or you can just write them down using common sense. If you re given an A, then the next unit can only be another A or a B. You may now be saying to yourself, We are surely done with all these definitions. But no-o-o-o-o You can have conditional probabilities of different orders Sometimes this subject shows no mercy. 

We have alresdy shown in Equations 6-21 how you can break down a compound event, like the number fraction of (or probability of finding) a triad sequence such as AAA, into conditional probabilities of different order. Let s first write this in a slightly different form to give you a feel for the nomenclature (Equation 6-24)  

Then generalize this to a consideration of a sequence of n units (Equation 6-25)  

For the terminal model, then, we can write Equation 6-26 for the number fraction of AAA triads  

if the addition of the next unit to a chain depends only on the nature of the end group, we have (Equation 6-27)  

---