Mutually exclusive

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In probability theory, events E₁, E₂, ... , E_n are said to be mutually exclusive if the occurrence of any one them automatically implies the non-occurrence of the remaining n-1 events. In other words, two mutually exclusive events cannot both occur.

Examples

A flipped coin coming up heads and the same coin coming up tails are mutually exclusive events.
A student passing a test and failing it are mutually exclusive (though someone can fail a test, retake it, and then pass).

See also: excluded middle.

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