Newborn's sex after a boy is picked from the nursery
Question
A nursery contains boys and some unknown number of girls. A newborn, equally likely to be a boy or a girl, is added. A nurse then picks a child at random from the nursery and it is a boy. What is the probability that the newborn is a boy?
Short answer
. With girls, a boy is picked with probability if the newborn is a boy and if not. The common denominator and equal priors cancel in Bayes' rule, leaving regardless of .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
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