For an event in a sample space , the complementary event occurs exactly when does not occur. The complement rule of probability follows from the Kolmogorov axioms: and are disjoint, their union is , and their probabilities therefore add to .
This rule is useful when an event is easier to describe through its failure. For a nonnegative integer-valued random variable , turns an at-least-one calculation into a single value of the probability mass function. In sampling without replacement, the hypergeometric distribution gives the chance of missing all marked objects, so its complement gives the chance of finding at least one.
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