Question

Andre picks a block out of a bag 60 times and notes that 43 of them were green. What should Andre estimate for the probability of picking out a green block from this bag? Mai looks in the bag and sees that there are 6 blocks in the bag. Should Andre change his estimate based on this information? If so, what should the new estimate be? If not, explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

a.The estimate is 43/60

b.No, he should not change the estimate based on this information

Explanation:

The estimate he would make is dividing the number of bricks which he sees as green by the total number of bricks. That would be the probability of selecting a green brick out of all the 60 bricks.

Mathematically this probability is 43/60

No, Andre should not change his estimate.

The reason is that we are only told that she looked in the bag and saw 6 bricks, we do not know whether the kind of bricks he saw were green in color. The only time it is necessary for Andre to change his estimate is when it is confirmed that the six bricks seen by Mai in the bag were essentially confirmed to be green. without this confirmation, the estimate should not be changed.