Characteristic function (probability theory)

A characteristic function is a way to describe how likely something is to happen. It's like flipping a coin: there's a 50% chance that the coin will land on heads or tails (medium probability). But if someone bets that the coin will land on tails, the characteristic function would be 0.5 (high probability). That means the chance of the coin landing on tails is much more likely than it is to land on heads. This is because the characteristic function is set to the right value to describe that the coin has more of a chance of landing on tails than on heads.