‫הנדסת מערכות מידע‬ ‫פרופ' יובל שחר‬

Information Systems Engineering Prof. Yuval Shahar, M.D., Ph.D.

1 ‫תרגיל‬
‫ניתוח וקבלת החלטות במערכות מידע‬
Judgment and Decision Making in Information Systems

1. (45%) Recall the Game Show question: You are on a game show, given the choice of 3 doors.
Behind one is a prize, behind the 2 others, goats. You get to keep whatever is behind the door
you chose. You pick a door at random (say, No. 1) and the host, who knows what is behind the
doors, opens another door (say, No. 2), which has a goat behind it. (Note: If the host has a
choice between 2 doors with goats, he picks one at random. In any case, he is always going to
open a door behind which is a goat).
a. Create a detailed table of cases to show that your chances of winning the prize
increase from 1/3 to 2/3 if you switch doors from No.1 to No. 3. (Note: there are 3
main cases depending on where the prize is; for each case, you can chose any of the 3
doors, and the host can then chose any door that has a goat behind it, and then you
either win or lose).
b. Using Bayes theorem only, show that the odds on the prize being behind door 3 are
2:1 given that the host opened door 2.
c. Prove that in general, using Bayes theorem or another formal argument, that for N
doors the odds on switching are N-1 to 1.
d. Assume that the host does not know what is behind any door, and picks door No. 2 at
random after we chose Door No 1. What are the odds on switching now? Why?
Show using Bayes theorem.
e. Prove the result of a random choice of a door by the host for the case of N doors,
using Bayes theorem or another formal argument.

2. (18%) Recall the birthday problem (i.e., what are the odds on at least 2 people out of N having
the same birthday, assuming 365 days in a year and uniform and independent distribution of
birthdays).
a. Compute the probability for N=10, N=23, N= 30 and N= 40 people.
b. How many people at least are needed to be in the class so that the probability of at
least one of them being born on the 4th of July is at least 50%?

3. (19%) Assume we have 2 urns. Each has for practical purposes an infinite amount of poker
chips. Urn A has 70% red and 30% blue chips, urn B has 70% blue and 30% red chips. We
chose one of them at random and draw at random 12 chips from it, who turn out to be 8 red
and 4 blue chips.
a. If we chose urn A, what is the probability of this particular chip distribution?
b. If we don’t know which urn was chosen, what is the probability that the chips came
from urn A?

4. (18%) You are a physician who has just examined a woman with a lump in her breast. The
textbooks and your experience estimate the probability of a malignant tumor (cancer) in such
a lump to be 1/100, that is, 1%. To be safe, you order a mammogram, an X-ray test that
classifies correctly (i.e., says what the tumor type really as, and otherwise says the reverse)
80% of the malignant tumors, and 90% of the benign (harmless) tumors. The test,
surprisingly, is positive (that is, the radiologist classified the tumor as malignant).
a. What is the probability that the patient has a malignant tumor now?
b. Why? What is usually the major factor in the posterior odds of such a diagnosis, in
your opinion?