Programming Probability Distributions

Introduction

It's time to get more experience programming in Python. Probability distributions involve algebraic functions and visualizing those functions.

You'll start out by making a few basic functions to calculate and visualize continuous uniform probability distributions.

Then, you'll program a more complex distribution: a non-uniform discrete probability distribution.

Next, you'll use those skills to explore how a self-driving car, or really any robot, might represent its location probabilities in a discrete, 1-D world. Then you'll expand into probabilities in a 2-D world. You're going to implement the 2-D world using something called a class, which is a sort of programming template. You'll learn more about classes in the exercises.

Finally, you'll become familiar with a probability distribution that is especially important to self-driving cars: the normal distribution.

Skills

Here is a summary of the skills you'll work on in these excercises:

Python Skills

• Writing a function in python
• Initializing 1-Dimensional and 2-Dimensional arrays
• Creating visualizations
• Classes in Python

Probability Skills

• Calculating probabilities for a continuous uniform distribution
• Calculating probabilities for a discrete non-uniform distribution
• Location probabilities on a 1-D grid
• Location probabilities on a 2-D grid