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posted by  jtygs on 10/5/2008 11:48:19 AM  |  status: Live  

Independence

Course Textbook Chapter Problem
Statistics and Probability Probability, Statistics, and Random Processes for Electrical Engineers N/A N/A
Question Details:
There are two boxes.  Each box contains both black and white balls.  Now you select a box at random.  After you select a box, you pick up a ball from this box and note the ball's color. 

Let event A = Box 1 is selected

Let event B = A black ball is observed

Under what conditions are A and B independent?

I know that there has to be an equal number of black and white balls in each box for A and B to be independent.

Can anyone help me prove this using arbitrary numbers of balls?



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posted by mafioso on 10/5/2008 12:13:09 PM  |  status: Live
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jtygs's comment:
"Thank you!"
Response Details:
Like you said, there has to be an equal amount of black and white balls in each box for them to be independent.  In other words, the probability of picking a black ball is the same a picking a probability of a black ball given box one (or box 2). In notation, we write that as:

SO let's assume that there are 10 black balls and 10 white balls in box 1, and that there are 10 black balls and five white balls in box 2.  The probability of picking a black ball in general is (10 + 10)/ (10 +10 +10 +5) = 4/7

The probability of picking a black ball given you are picking from box 1 is 10/20 or 1/2.  So when there are unequal amounts of each ball in the boxes, is false, which is a contradiction. If there are the same amount of each ball in each box, then the equation is true.
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