Question

a group of professionals sit at a table at a conference. before the presentation begins, they all put their cellular phones (they each have 1) into a basket in the middle of the table. one of them, keira, has a white phone. assume that each of the remaining phones at the table (not belonging to keira) has a probability of being white, independent of each other. at the end of the presentation, keira reached for a phone in the basket before everyone else. given that the phone she picked is white, what is the probability that the phone in her hand is actually hers?

Answer 1

Answer: Not mine btw

AI-generated answer

To calculate the probability that the white phone Keira picked is actually hers, we need to consider the total number of phones in the basket and the number of white phones among them.

Let's break down the problem step by step:

1. We know that Keira has a white phone, so we can be certain that there is at least one white phone in the basket.

2. Before Keira picked a phone, there were (n-1) phones in the basket, where n represents the total number of professionals at the table. Since we don't have any information about the total number of professionals or the number of phones in the basket, we cannot calculate the probability directly.

3. However, we know that each of the remaining phones at the table (not belonging to Keira) has a probability of being white, independent of each other. This means that the probability of any individual phone being white is the same for each phone.

4. Since we don't have specific information about the number of white phones in the basket or the total number of phones, we cannot calculate the exact probability. However, we can make some assumptions to illustrate how the probability would change.

a. If there is only one white phone in the basket (other than Keira's), then the probability that the phone Keira picked is hers would be 1/(n-1). In this case, there is only one possible white phone that Keira could have picked.

b. If there are multiple white phones in the basket (other than Keira's), then the probability that the phone Keira picked is hers would be 1/(n-1+x), where x represents the number of white phones other than Keira's. In this case, there are multiple possible white phones that Keira could have picked.

In conclusion, without knowing the specific number of white phones in the basket or the total number of phones, we cannot calculate the exact probability. However, we can see that the probability decreases as the number of white phones in the basket (other than Keira's) increases.