Odds are a way of expressing the likelihood of an event. Odds would be the number of ways an event can occur divided by the number of ways an event cannot occur.

Probability is the number of ways an event can occur divided by the total number of events.

An illustrative example is given below:

Q. Find the odds of randomly selecting the letter p in the word "Mississippi"

There are 11 letters in the word Mississippi. 2 letters are p's and 9 letters are not p's.

Hence odds would be (2/11)/ (1-(2/11))

Odds = 0.1818/ (0.8182) = 0.22

The formula used is:

Odds = Probability / (1 - Probability)

Probability is entered as a proportion into this equation; however, if a % is used, this is divided by 100 to calculate a proportion.