(2019-10-05, 12:09 AM)Laird Wrote: But they do come into play: in calculating the probability of an equal split of 3 in 8, I assumed that each row of the table was equally likely to occur, which in turn was based on that assumption. If the different rows occurred with different likelihoods (i.e., if the likelihood of a child being a boy or girl was not equal), then the probability would not have been 3 in 8 - it would have been some other value.
To elaborate, because calculating that probability is not strictly part of the puzzle: if the likelihoods of each child being a boy or a girl were not equal, then I could not simply sum up the numbers in the two data columns of my table: I would need to work out probabilities first to multiply them by.