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Miscellaneous 9 - II · Q97

Q.A family has two children. One of them is chosen at random and found that the child is a girl. Find the probability that a) both the children are girls. b) both the children are girls given that at least one of them is a girl.

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This is the classic boy-or-girl paradox, contrasting two different ways of learning 'a child is a girl'.

a) One of the two children is chosen at random and observed to be a girl. Enumerate all 8 equally likely (family type, which child was picked) outcomes over the 4 family types {BB,BG,GB,GG}, each with 2 choices of which child to observe: the observed child is a girl in exactly 4 of these 8 (BG-2nd, GB-1st, GG-1st, GG-2nd). Of THOSE 4, the family is GG (both girls) in 2 of them. So P(both girls∣a randomly chosen child is a girl)=2/4=1/2P(\text{both girls}\mid\text{a randomly chosen child is a girl})=2/4=1/2. …

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