Shivari post=18.73797.809458 said:
werepossum post=18.73797.809448 said:
dirtface post=18.73797.809384 said:
Ok this is like the monty hall problem.
If atleast one is male, you have three possible situations
Beagle1 Beagle 2
Male Male
Male Female
Female Male
Of these three possible outcomes, only one of them results in the second beagle being male.
Thats where the 33% comes from...
That's the logic behind the problem, however there's also the idea of independent events... the mind boggles.
Give this person a banana. The two beagles are already selected as part of a set; thus the 33%. If you selected one beagle, discovered it was male, then selected another beagle, the chance would be 50%. But if you select them two at a time and identify one as male, you remove the chance that both are female before the second chance.
But the gender of the second one isn't dependent on the first one. It's still 50% right?
No, 33% is correct because the two beagles are part of a set. If you randomly select two pups, each has a 50% chance of being male. Therefore the chances for the set are 25% male and female, 25% male and male, 25% female and male, and 25% female and female. If you examine one pup and confirm that it is male, then you eliminate the 25% chance
for the set that both are female. Now your chances (rounded to integers) are 33% male and female, 33% male and male, and 33% female and male. Technically speaking you're not calculating the chance the second pup is male, you are calculating the chance that two males were randomly selected in this set of two. The odds of that were originally 25%, but after eliminating the possibility that two females were selected the odds change to 33%.
If you selected one pup from an infinite, evenly divided pool of beagle pups (note: this is the definition of rabbit hell) and determined that it was a male, the chance that the next pup selected would also be male is 50% because the first pup's sex cannot affect the second pup's sex. But if you select them together, then the odds are as above. Dirtface explained it correctly, he or she was just a bit uncertain as to why.