My understanding would be:
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Probabilities: Chance of a certain outcome happening. E.g. Outcome A has a 70% chance B a 20% and C 10%
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Possibilities: what outcome scenarios exist. E.g. there exist 3 (A B C). Those Possibilities might have a probability associated with them
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Plausibility: looks at the degree of truth of a statement. So if it logically makes sense and is the correct answer/is what happened. You might make a judgement of the plausibility of a possibility based on the probability of it happening. Say if something has two outcomes one with a 99% chance and the other 1% then that might be the more plausible one. Or if it has no chance, then it might be implausible
Edit: since someone mentioned the example of a coin toss.
Head and tails have a probability of 50% each (for the sake of simplicity I assume it won’t land standing up)
A coin toss has two possible outcomes (possibilities). Head and tails.
Someone says he flipped a coin and got head 1000 times in a row. That’s not plausible with a fair coin because of the low chance of it actually happening (even if there is a indefinitely small chance). As a result you might assume he is either lying or the coin is weighted for that outcome.
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Probabilities - The mathematically determined chance that something will happen given a specific scenario.
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Possibilities - The set off all things with a >0% chance of happening given a specific scenario.
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Plausibility - The outcomes of a specific scenario, that when presented to a reasonable person, that person would determine that they are possible.
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- Decent chance of happening.
- Is theoretically possible but unlikely.
- Could happen, but there’s no data on how likely it is.
Probability is a numeric value between: 0 and 1 of how likely an event is going to happen. Depending on the definition, I would say that possibilities and plausabilities are both events with a nonzero probability. Colloquially, possibilities are more likely than plausabilities I guess. Source: two thirds of a stats phd and C2 level english skills lol
when people say its plausible tho, I feel like that means its a bit more likely or they entertain the chance of it happening or being correct more than a mere possibillity tho
Plausible is more like conceivable.
It’s possible that when I slam my hand on the table, it will go through the table, but it’s not plausible. We can’t imagine it actually happening, even though we know it can.
