[Math] What does $P(A \triangle B)$ mean

elementary-set-theoryprobability

I know its a simple question but its hard to google these symbols. Anyways, anyone care to explain what $P(A \triangle B)$ means? I haven't seen this symbol before and I'm not sure on how to interpret it.

Best Answer

The triangle is almost certainly being used to for symmetric difference:

$$A\mathrel{\triangle}B=(A\setminus B)\cup(B\setminus A)=(A\cup B)\setminus(A\cap B)\;.$$

The $P$ might be the power set operator, in which case the whole thing is the set of all subsets of $A\mathrel{\triangle}B$:

$$P(A\mathrel{\triangle}B)=\{X:X\subseteq A\mathrel{\triangle}B\}.$$

However, a script $P$ is more often used for this purpose, and as has just been pointed out to me, you used the tag, so $P(A\mathrel{\triangle}B)$ is probably the probability assigned to the subset $A\mathrel{\triangle}B$ of your sample space.

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