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The Tuesday Birthday Problem
An anonymous reader sends in a mathematical puzzle introduced at the recent Gathering 4 Gardner, a convention of mathematicians, magicians, and puzzle enthusiasts held biannually in Atlanta. The Tuesday Birthday Problem is simply stated, but tends to mislead both intuitive and mathematically informed guesses. "I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday. What's the probability that my other child is a boy?" The submitter adds, "Believe it or not, the Tuesday thing is relevant. Well, sort of. It's ambiguous."
It's playing games with words and attaching significance to two sets that in any practical case I can think of would be considered one.
The argument is that if you were to consider it as a set, there are four possible ways for your children to be distributed:
1. (Boy, Boy)
2. (Boy, Girl)
3. (Girl, Boy)
4. (Girl, Girl)
We already know that your children can't possibly fall into the fourth set, and so looking at the sets it appears that the probability should be 1/3. But this misses one minor point - you've added an extra set which only makes sense if you wish to attach significance to the order in which the children were born (Sets 2 and 3). But as soon as you do attach that significance, the information you are given in order to establish the probability of any particular outcome (eg. the boy is older) allows you to eliminate two sets rather than just one.