Tuesday, June 29, 2010

When intuition and math probably look wrong

Here are two riddles with different answers:

I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?

Suppose that Mr. Smith has two children, at least one of whom is a son. What is the probability both children are boys?

The question is, why are they different?  The article on information and probability in Science News was very interesting.