GEM2900: Understanding

Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking

David Nott
standj@nus.edu.sg
Department of Statistics and Applied Probability
National University of Singapore

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 1
 Continuous Assessment # 2

A reminder that continuous assessment # 2 is available on the IVLE.

The question sheet is in the workbin, but you submit your answers
electronically.

I’ve had a large number of questions about Task 4 ...

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 128
 Continuous Assessment # 2

From amongst the collection of all two child families, a family is randomly
chosen (this means that writing B for a boy and G for a girl and for
example, BG for the event that the eldest child is a boy and the youngest
a girl, the set of all possibilities is

{BB, BG, GB, GG}

and these are assumed equally likely).

After choosing a family in this way, one of the children is chosen at

random and it is a boy. What is the chance that the other child is also a
boy?

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 129
 Continuous Assessment # 2

Many people have emailed me saying that the answer is 1/3 (which is not
one of the options given) reasoning that one of the children is a boy so
that the outcomes {BB, BG, GB} are equally likely.

This isn’t correct, the reason being that these outcomes are not equally
likely. To understand why, consider the fact that if you choose the pair BB
then you are certain to choose a boy for the random choice of child, but
for BG and GB this isn’t certain.

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 130
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Birthday problem
How large does a group of (randomly selected) people have to be such
that the probability that at least two people share the same birthday is
larger that 0.5?
You may assume that a year has only 365 days, i.e. ignore leap years.
You may further assume that any day of the year is equally likely to be the birthday of a
randomly selected person.

Woolfson (2008, Chapter 5.1)

Olofsson (2007, Chapter 2)
GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 131
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Birthday problem
How large does a group of (randomly selected) people have to be such
that the probability that at least two people share the same birthday is
larger that 0.5?
You may assume that a year has only 365 days, i.e. ignore leap years.
You may further assume that any day of the year is equally likely to be the birthday of a
randomly selected person.

Answer: under these assumptions, the probability of having at least one shared birthday
is just over 0.5 if there are 23 persons in the room.

Woolfson (2008, Chapter 5.1)

Olofsson (2007, Chapter 2)
GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 131
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

For simplicity consider the case of 3 people (let’s call them Amelia, Bob
and Camilla, or A, B and C).

Let’s count how many ways A, B and C can have distinct birthdays. There
are 365 choices for A’s birthday, then 364 remaining days to choose from
for B, and then 363 remaining days to choose from for C.

Number of possibilities: 365 × 364 × 363.

How many ways can A, B and C have birthdays? Clearly there are 365
choices for each person, so number of possibilities is 365 × 365 × 365.

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 132
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Let D = {All birthdays are distinct}. Then

Number of ways of having distinct birthdays

P (D) =
Number of ways of having birthdays
365 × 364 × 363
=
365 × 365 × 365
and
P (D̄) = 1 − P (D).

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 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

In general, with n people in the room,

Number of ways of having distinct birthdays

P (D) =
Number of ways of having birthdays
365 × · · · × (365 − n + 1)
=
365n
and
P (D̄) = 1 − P (D).

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 134
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

I had the following perceptive question after last lecture. Shouldn’t I be

counting unordered subsets when I think about sets of distinct birthdays
for n people?

In my argument I’ve given names to the three people, which means that
order matters. For example, a set of birthdays of Feb 1 for A, Feb 2 for B
and Feb 3 for C is not the same as Feb 2 for A, Feb 1 for B and Feb 3 for
C.

If I didn’t give my people names and just counted unordered subsets,

does it make any difference? No - there’s the same number of ways of
arranging each of the ordered subsets in numerator and denominator in
my calculation of P(D) so it doesn’t make a difference.
GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 135
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Inverse Birthday problem

How large does a group of (randomly selected) people have to be such
that the probability that some one is sharing his or her birthday with you is
larger that 0.5?
You may assume that a year has only 365 days, i.e. ignore leap years.
You may further assume that any day of the year is equally likely to be the birthday of a
randomly selected person.

Olofsson (2007, Chapter 2)

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 136
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Inverse Birthday problem

How large does a group of (randomly selected) people have to be such
that the probability that some one is sharing his or her birthday with you is
larger that 0.5?
You may assume that a year has only 365 days, i.e. ignore leap years.
You may further assume that any day of the year is equally likely to be the birthday of a
randomly selected person.
Answer: under these assumptions, the probability of having another person sharing your
birthday is just over 0.5 if there are 253 other persons in the room, i.e. with a total of 254
persons in the room.

Olofsson (2007, Chapter 2)

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 136
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Inverse Birthday problem

How large does a group of (randomly selected) people have to be such
that the probability that some one is sharing his or her birthday with you is
larger that 0.5?
You may assume that a year has only 365 days, i.e. ignore leap years.
You may further assume that any day of the year is equally likely to be the birthday of a
randomly selected person.
Answer: under these assumptions, the probability of having another person sharing your
birthday is just over 0.5 if there are 253 other persons in the room, i.e. with a total of 254
persons in the room.
Why this difference? The inverse birthday problem requires the sharing of a particular
day as the common birthday; the birthday problem allows that any day is the shared
birthday.
Olofsson (2007, Chapter 2)
GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 136
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Example: The game of craps

Craps is played with two dice.

The basic rules are: If the thrower gets

 a sum of either 7 or 11 in the first throw, she or he wins immediately,

 a sum of either 2, 3 or 12 she or he looses immediately, and
 any other sum, then that sum becomes the thrower’s point.
The game will now continue until the thrower rolls

 a sum of 7, in which case he or she loses, or

 his or her point again, in which case he or she wins.

What are the probabilities for the various outcomes on the first roll of the dice?

Woolfson (2008, Chapter 2.5)

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 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

The Law of Total Probability:

Let A1 , . . . , An be mutually exclusive and exhaustive events. Then for
any other event B ,

P (B) = P (B|A1)P (A1 ) + · · · + P (B|An )P (An )

n
= P (B|Ai )P (Ai)
i=1

In particular:

P (B) = P (B|A)P (A) + P (B|Ac )P (Ac)

Woolfson (2008, Chapter 7)
Lindley (2006, Chapter 5, calls it extension of the conversation)
GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 138
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Example:
An urn contains 4 white and 4 red balls. Let B be the event that on the
first draw we pulled a white ball out of the urn. Let A be the event that the
second draw yield a red ball.
What is P (A)? What is P (B)? What is P (B|A)?
Assume that on each draw every ball has the same chances of being drawn and that
balls are not placed back into the urn after being drawn.

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 139
 How to calculate with probabilities (cont.)

Example: The game of craps (cont.)

What is the probability of winning the game of craps?

Woolfson (2008, Chapter 7.3)

GEM2900: Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking DSAP, NUS, Semester 2, 2008/2009 – 140