Your neighbour has 2 children. You learn that he has a son, joe. What is the probability that joe’s sibling is a brother?
The probability that Joe's sibling is a brother is 1/2 or 0.5.
Assuming that gender is equally likely at birth, there are two equally likely possibilities for the gender of Joe's sibling: male or female. Given that Joe is a male, the gender of his sibling is independent of his gender, so the probability that Joe's sibling is also male is simply the probability that a random child in the family is male, which is 1/2 or 0.5.
My teacher said the answer is 0.75, in what circumstances we can get this answer?
The answer of 0.75 would be obtained if the question was phrased slightly differently, for example:
Your neighbor has 2 children, and tells you that at least one of them is a boy named Joe. What is the probability that Joe's sibling is a brother?
In this scenario, there are three equally likely possibilities for the genders of the two children:
Joe has a brother and a sister
Joe has a brother but no sister
Joe has a sister but no brother
We know that Joe is a boy, so the third possibility can be eliminated. This leaves us with two equally likely possibilities, one of which has Joe's sibling as a brother. Therefore, the probability that Joe's sibling is a brother is 1/2, or 0.5.
However, we are given the additional information that one of the children is named Joe. This means that the first possibility (Joe has a brother and a sister) can be eliminated as well, since we know that Joe is one of the children. This leaves us with only two possibilities, one of which has Joe's sibling as a brother. Therefore, the probability that Joe's sibling is a brother is 0.75.
So the answer of 0.75 would be correct if the question specified that we know one of the children is named Joe. If we only know that the neighbor has 2 children and one of them is a boy named Joe, then the probability of Joe's sibling being a brother would be 0.5.
膠智的kai龍2023-02-20 17:24:26
分別係"Joe"係咪一個fixed person (即係係咪鳩抽咁岩抽中左一條友叫呀Joe)
unfixed就1/3, fixed就1/2