Comment by Chinjut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chinjut | Hacker News Reader

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Your problem is that you are thinking there's a "the boy". But there's not a "the boy". Mr. Jones could have two boys. He could have two boys both born on Tuesday, even. The term "the boy" does not denote any particular boy, in that case, and causes you to think about the situation erroneously.

If the question were "There's Kid 1 and Kid 2, each independently selected with random gender and birth-day-of-the-week. Out of those cases where Kid 1 is a boy born on Tuesday, what proportion are cases where Kid 2 is a girl?", then the answer would indeed be a straightforward 50%; the status of Kid 1 is entirely independent of the status of Kid 2.

But that's not the question. The question is "There's Kid 1 and Kid 2, each independently selected with random gender and birth-day-of-the-week. Out of those cases where at least one (either one, and possibly both) of Kid 1 and Kid 2 is a boy born on Tuesday, what proportion are cases where at least one of Kid 1 and Kid 2 is a girl?".

This is very different, and of course just drawing out the possibilities (all 2 * 7 * 2 * 7 equiprobable-by-stipulation choices of gender and birth-day-of-the-week for Kid 1 and Kid 2) and circling which pairs of subsets are the relevant ones for the two questions reveals the difference, the probabilities for either question elementarily calculable in this way by basic counting.

The 14/27 answer in the video is correct, incidentally.

Also, I notice you said "Somehow knowing the day of the week the boy was born changes the result. It's completely bizarre."

Remember, though, there's no "the boy". The question "On which day of the week was the boy born? Tell me, I need to know!" does not always have a well-defined answer.

Indeed, you'd get the same 14/27 answer even if "Tuesday" in the question "What proportion of two-children families with at least one Tuesday boy have a girl?" was replaced by any other day. And if this seems paradoxically in conflict with the fact that simply asking "What proportion of two-children families with at least one boy have a girl?" has instead the answer 2/3, reflect again upon the fact that some families have two boys born on different days, so that there's no single answer to "On what day was 'the boy' born?". And then just draw out the cases and count.

(Specifically, out of the 2 * 7 * 2 * 7 equiprobable cases overall for Kid 1 and Kid 2's genders and days, there are 27 cases where there's at least one Tuesday boy, and 14 cases where there's at least one Tuesday boy and also a girl. There are 3 * 7^2 cases where there's at least one boy, and 2 * 7^2 cases where there's at least one boy and also a girl.)

Many of these questions, I think, become clearer if thought of as counting questions instead of as "probability" questions (though it's all the same; the math called "probability" is just the math of various kinds of counting (from simple counting as in this case to complexly weighted continuous measurements, but still ultimately a generalized form of counting). However, despite that equivalence, the concept "probability" has developed all these other distracting connotations, such that psychologically, there can be a useful difference in perspective in switch to explicitly thinking "counting" instead. No one would long dispute that there are 27 cases with at least one Tuesday boy, etc.).

Agreed. He removed the second B2B2 probability annotation as though it were a repeat of the first and inapplicable to the probability set, but that's not the case, and it shouldn't be removed. Apply lower-case to the younger boy in the probability sets and it's clear why. B2b2 is not the same occurrence as b2B2. Even though the day both were born on was "a Tuesday" doesn't mean both probability instances are referring to the exact same event. Except in the case of twins, which is outside the scope of the exercise.

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