trist comments on Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) - Less Wrong
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Comments (191)
I agree with this.
I agree with this if they said something along the lines of "One and only one of them was born on Tuesday". If not, I don't see how the Boy(tu)/Boy(tu) configuration has the same probability as the others, because it's twice as likely as the other two configurations that that is the configuration they are talking about when they say "One was born on Tuesday".
Here's my breakdown with 1000 families, to try to make it clear what I mean:
1000 Families with two children, 750 have boys.
Of the 750, 500 have one boy and one girl. Of these 500, 1/7, or roughly 71 have a boy born on Tuesday.
Of the 750, 250 have two boys. Of these 250, 2/7, or roughly 71 have a boy born on Tuesday.
71 = 71, so it's equally likely that there are two boys as there are a boy and a girl.
Having two boys doubles the probability that one boy was born on Tuesday compared to having just one boy.
And I don't think I'm confused about the sampling, because I didn't use the sampling reasoning to get my result*, but I'm not super confident about that so if I am just keep giving me numbers and hopefully it will click.
*I mean in the previous post, not specifically this post.
This is wrong. With two boys each with a probability of 1/7 to be born on Tuesday, the probability of at least one on a Tuesday isn't 2/7, its 1-(6/7)^2
How can that be? There is a 1/7 chance that one of the two is born on Tuesday, and there is a 1/7 chance that the other is born on Tuesday. 1/7 + 1/7 is 2/7.
There is also a 1/49 chance that both are born on tuesday, but how does that subtract from the other two numbers? It doesn't change the probability that either of them are born on Tuesday, and both of those probabilities add.
The problem is that you're counting that 1/49th chance twice. Once for the first brother and once for the second.
I see that now, it took a LOT for me to get it for some reason.