Math A Sample Space

A sample space is a set of all possible outcomes for an activity or experiment.

Activity	Sample Space
Rolling a die	{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
Tossing a coin	{ Heads, Tails}
Drawing a card from a standard deck	{52 cards}
Drawing one marble from the bottle	{8 marbles}
Rolling a pair of dice	{(1,1) (1,2) (1,3) (1,4) (1,5) (1,6) (2,1) (2,2) (2,3) (2,4) (2,5) (2,6) (3,1) (3,2) (3,3) (3,4) (3,5) (3,6) (4,1) (4,2) (4,3) (4,4) (4,5) (4,6) (5,1) (5,2) (5,3) (5,4) (5,5) (5,6) (6,1) (6,2) (6,3) (6,4) (6,5) (6,6)}
Choosing an outfit from a green blouse, a red blouse, a black skirt, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of sandals	{green blouse-skirt-sneakers, green blouse-skirt-sandals, red blouse-skirt-sneakers, red blouse-skirt-sandals}

As you can see, sample spaces can become very large.

When determining a sample space, be sure to consider ALL possibilities.  Oftentimes this can be a difficult task.  To make this process easier, we may wish to use the Counting Principle or a Tree Diagram.

Remember:  A sample space is the set of ALL possible outcomes.