Circumstance that is unpredictable and whose effects can be favourable or unfavourable.
Characteristic of what occurs outside of all objective or subjective norms or rules.
Examples
- In everyday life, we often talk about good luck or bad luck. Julie says that she was unlucky during the last lottery draw. It’s chance that decided the winners; it had nothing to do with good luck or bad luck.
- It’s important to realize that the results of random experiments are due to chance.
- Chance expresses the impossibility of predicting any given fact with certainty, which means predicting what will occur. So, to clarify the meaning of the term, it is often said that chance is synonymous for “unpredictability”.
The use of the expression “with certainty” is important, because it is always possible to predict different eventualities, and even their probabilities, but we simply cannot say which one will happen for sure. For example, when rolling an honest die with six faces numbered 1 to 6, we know that the result will be one of the six possibilities, but we do not know which one.
Historical note
The word “chance” comes from the Old French word “cheance” meaning fortune, accident, or chance.
Dice games are games of chance.