Two sons given the child you happened to meet
Question
You run into a woman you know has two children, and she is walking with one of them, a boy. Assuming the child accompanying her was equally likely to be either one, and boys and girls are equally likely, what is the probability both her children are boys?
Short answer
. Seeing a specific child tells you that child's sex only. Formally, and for BG or GB, so Bayes gives ; this differs from the at-least-one-boy version.
Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Boys and girls B', p.73; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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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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