bigjeff5 comments on Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) - Less Wrong
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No, read it again. It's confusing as all getout, which is why they make the mistake, but EACH child can be born on ANY day of the week. The boy on Tuesday is a red herring, he doesn't factor into the probability for what day the second child can be born on at all. The two boys are not the same boys, they are individuals and their probabilities are individual. Re-label them Boy1 and Boy2 to make it clearer:
Here is the breakdown for the Boy1Tu/Boy2Any option:
Boy1Tu/Boy2Monday Boy1Tu/Boy2Tuesday Boy1Tu/Boy2Wednesday Boy1Tu/Boy2Thursday Boy1Tu/Boy2Friday Boy1Tu/Boy2Saturday Boy1Tu/Boy2Sunday
Then the BAny/Boy1Tu option:
Boy2Monday/Boy1Tu Boy2Tuesday/Boy1Tu Boy2Wednesday/Boy1Tu Boy2Thursday/Boy1Tu Boy2Friday/Boy1Tu Boy2Saturday/Boy1Tu Boy2Sunday/Boy1Tu
Seven options for both. For some reason they claim either BTu/Tuesday isn't an option, or Tuesday/BTu isn't an option, but I see no reason for this. Each boy is an individual, and each boy has a 1/7 probability of being born on a given day. In attempting to avoid counting evidence twice you've skipped counting a piece of evidence at all! In the original statement, they never said one and ONLY one boy was born on Tuesday, just that one was born on Tuesday. That's where they screwed up - they've denied the second boy the option of being born on Tuesday for no good reason.
A key insight that should have triggered their intuition that their method was wrong was that they state that if you can find a trait rarer than being born on Tuesday, like say being born on the 27th of October, then you'll approach 50% probability. That is true because the actual probability is 50%.
You're double-counting the case where both boys are born on Tuesday, just like they said.
If you find a trait rarer than being born on Tuesday, the double-counting is a smaller percentage of the scenarios, so being closer to 50% is expected.
Which boy did I count twice?
Edit:
BAny/Boy1Tu in the above quote should be Boy2Any/Boy1Tu.
You could re-label boy1 and boy2 to be cat and dog and it won't change the probabilities - that would be CatTu/DogAny.