Some teasers concerning conditional probabilities

Maya Bar-Hillel*, Ruma Falk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

100 Scopus citations

Abstract

A family of notorious teasers in probability is discussed. All ask for the probability that the objects of a certain pair both have some property when information exists that at least one of them does. These problems should be solved using conditional probabilities, but cause difficulties in characterizing the conditioning event appropriately. In particular, they highlight the importance of determining the way information is being obtained. A probability space for modeling verbal problems should allow for the representation of the given outcome and the statistical experiment which yielded it. The paper gives some psychological reasons for the tricky nature of these problems, and some practical tips for handling them.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)109-122
Number of pages14
JournalCognition
Volume11
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1982

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