Chris_Thiessen comments on My Bayesian Enlightenment - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 October 2008 04:45PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (57)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Chris_Thiessen 05 October 2008 08:04:52PM 1 point [-]

So the clear Bayesian version is: Mathematician says "I have two children", and you say, "Please tell me the sex of one of them", and she says "male". What's the chance both are boys?

One step back, though. The prior probability of being asked: "One's a girl. What's the chance both are boys?" is probably close to 0.

So the correct question to avoid that prior is: "What's the distribution of probabilities over 2 girls, one of each, and 2 boys?", not "What's the chance both are boys?"