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Probability Problem...HELP?!?!?
Assume that the male and female births are equally probable. A dictator decides that for military reasons he needs to increase the proportion of males in the population. He therefore requires that families with more than one daughter pay a heavy fine. As a result, the women of the nation stop bearing children once they have a girl.
What will the proportion of male children be as a result of this practice?
I figured this one out on my own...but inquiring minds want to know so....
There is not enough information to answer this question. It is not asking what the "proability" is it is asking for PROPORTION.
In order to compute a proportion, the two quantities being compared must be known. For this problem, that means that we need to know how many boys and how many girls were born. Neither is given.
3 Answers
- 1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Sorry Melli... it looks like that so far I am the only one that understands the question... and unfortunately I am stumped.
Dont listen to the other answerers before me... they are assuming that each woman only has one child.
Im not saying that their answer is wrong, just that their reasoning and justification is. Or otherwise they failed to communicate it.
- kelby7670Lv 71 decade ago
This is an old puzzle.
The answer is 1/2 of the children will be male.
The key is to ignore all of the possibilities and family sizes, they just lead to confusion.
The only thing to consider is that for each birth, the probability of a boy is 1/2 so the proportion of the total population will be 1/2
- 1 decade ago
They added fluff to get you confused forget about it all besides at the beginning it says the chances of male and female are equally probable so your answer is 1/2 or 0.5
