Question 9

Scenario: Suppose an individual is randomly selected from the population of all adult males living in the United States.

Events:

  • - The selected individual is over 6 feet in height.
  • - The selected individual is a professional basketball player.

Problem: Which do you think is larger, or ? Why?

Process: The conditional probability is the probability that the selected individual is over 6 feet in height given that they're a basketball player. The conditional probability is the probability that the selected individual is a basketball player given that they're over 6 feet in height. Demographically, there are more tall basketball players than there are tall people who are basketball players.

Answer: will be larger. will be smaller.