How do you find the conditional probability of an event when the two events aren’t independent

conditional probabilityprobability theory

Consider 3 urns. Um A contains 2 white and 4 red balls, um B contains 8 white and 4 red balls, and um C contains 1 white and 3 red balls. If 1 ball is selected from each urn, what is the probability that the ball chosen from um A was white given that exactly 2 white balls were selected?

This problem is in the conditional probability unit, so I'm confident that you have to use P(E|F) = P(E∩F) / P(F)… but since E and F aren't independent I don't know how to calculate P(E∩F)…

Thanks

Best Answer

How do you find the conditional probability of an event when the two events aren't independent?

Either through experimentation or theory. Here you can evaluate from the model of drawing balls from urns without bias.

Here you have $F$, the event of obtaining exactly two white balls when drawing one ball from each of the three urns, and $E_A, E_B, E_C$, the respective events of obtaining a white ball when drawing from the indicated urn. Note: these events will be independent, and you can easily calculate $\mathsf P(E_A)$, $\mathsf P(E_B)$ and $\mathsf P(E_C)$

Then $F= (E_A\cap E_B\cap E_C^\complement)\cup(E_A\cap E_B^\complement\cap E_C)\cup(E_A^\complement\cap E_B\cap E_C)$

You seek $\mathsf P(E_A\mid F)$, and do know :

$$\begin{align}\mathsf P(E_A\mid F) &=\dfrac{\mathsf P(E_A\cap F)}{ \mathsf P(F)}\\[2ex]&=\dfrac{\mathsf P\big(E_A\cap((E_B\cap E_C^\complement)\cup(E_B^\complement\cap E_C))\big)}{\mathsf P(F)}\end{align}$$

I shall leave the rest to you.