utfall

Utfall is a term used in Swedish and Norwegian to denote the result or consequence of a process, event, or random experiment. In everyday language it can refer to the outcome of a decision, a test, or any sequence of actions.

In probability theory, an utfall refers to a single result from a random experiment. The collection of all possible outcomes is called the sample space. An event is any subset of the sample space, describing one or more outcomes of interest. Probabilities are assigned to events, and in discrete cases the probability of a single utfall can be positive (for example, a fair die has an equal chance for each utfall 1 through 6). In continuous settings, the probability of a specific single utfall is typically zero, while probabilities are defined for ranges or more complex events.

Examples help illustrate the idea. Rolling a six-sided die has the utfall 3, 5, or any other number between 1 and 6. A coin toss has utfall heads or tails. Drawing a card from a standard deck has 52 possible utfall, each card being one outcome. In statistics, a random variable maps utfall to numerical values, and its distribution describes how likely different utfall or ranges of utfall are.

Utfall is used across disciplines, including risk assessment, decision analysis, and research reporting, to communicate the realized result of an experiment or process.