BAYES RULE

- Came from the idea of the relationships on Conditional Probabilities

- Considered as the most intriguing and most important rule in probability. In this process, the
probability is recalculated based on new information obtained related to the experiment in question.

P(A|B) = P (A and B)
P (B)

or

P (B|A) = P (A and B)
P(A)

Then,
P(A and B) =

P(A|B) P(B)

P (B|A) P(A)

Examples:
1. Your company uses a pre-employment test to screen applicants for the job of a repairman. The test is
passed by 60% of the applicants. Among those who passed the test, 80% completed the training
successfully. In this experiment, a random of applicants who do not pass the test is employed.
Training is successfully completed by only 50% of this group. If no pre-employment test was used,
what percentage of the applicants would you expect to complete the training successfully?
2. 20% of the employees of a company are college students and of these 75% are in supervisory
position. Of those who did not attend college, 20% are in supervisory positions. What is the
probability that a randomly selected supervisor is a college student?
3. In a factory, 4 machines produce the same product. Machine A produces 10% of the output; Machine
B, 20%; Machine C, 30% and Machine D, 40%. The proportions of defective items produced by these
are as follows: Machine A, 0.001; Machine B, 0.0005; Machine C, 0.005; Machine D, 0.002. An item
selected at random is found to be defective. What is the probability that the item was produced by A?
by B? by C? by D?
4. (From an Actual conducted U.S. survey) Approximately 1% of women aged 40-50 have breast cancer.
A woman with a breast cancer has a 90% chance of a positive test from a mammogram, while a
woman without has a 10% chance of a false positive result. What is the probability that a woman has
breast cancer given that she had just a positive test?
Assignment:
5. A bag contains 1 white ball and 3 red balls. A ball is drawn at random. If the ball is white, the it is put
back in the bag along with another white ball. If the ball is red, then it is put back in the bag with two
extra red balls. (a) find the probability that the second ball drawn is red; (b) find the probability that the
second ball is white.
6. Police plans to enforce speed limits by using radar traps at each of the locations L1, L2, L3, L4 and
are operated 40%, 30%, 20% and 30% of the time (there are times that both radar traps are active). If
a person who is speeding on his way to work has probabilities of 0.20, 0.1, 0.5, and 0.2 probabilities
of passing these locations respectively, (a) what is the probability that he will receive a speeding
ticket? (b) If a person received a speeding ticket on his way to work, what is the probability that he
passed through the radar trap at L2?