Re: A simple betting problem was RE: my objection to the Doomsday argument

From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 12:57:37 MDT

  • Next message: Michael M. Butler: "Re: Male Appendage Tissue Engineering"

    On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

    >Here's another trick question that only the true Bayesian will resolve.
    >You meet a mathematician. "How many children do you have?" you ask.
    >"Two," he replies, "and at least one of them is a boy." What is the
    >probability that they are both boys?
    >
    >I would *not* answer 1/3.

    Hey, this seems easy: one is surely a boy, and to have two of them we need
    the other to be a boy too. The sex of the second child is unknown (=50%),
    so we have a 50% probability that they are both boys.

    Ciao,
    Alfio

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Apr 30 2003 - 13:08:05 MDT