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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

1/21/2. Seeing a specific child tells you that child's sex only. Formally, P(see a boy∣BB)=1\mathbb{P}(\text{see a boy}\mid BB)=1 and =12=\tfrac12 for BG or GB, so Bayes gives 1414+12⋅12=12\dfrac{\tfrac14}{\tfrac14+\tfrac12\cdot\tfrac12}=\tfrac12; 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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