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June 2011 p61 q2
2632
When Ted is looking for his pen, the probability that it is in his pencil case is 0.7. If his pen is in his pencil case he always finds it. If his pen is somewhere else, the probability that he finds it is 0.2. Given that Ted finds his pen when he is looking for it, find the probability that it was in his pencil case.
Solution
Let the event that the pen is in the pencil case be denoted as \(P(C) = 0.7\), and the event that Ted finds the pen given it is in the pencil case be \(P(F|C) = 1\). The event that the pen is not in the pencil case is \(P(C') = 0.3\), and the probability that Ted finds the pen given it is not in the pencil case is \(P(F|C') = 0.2\).
We need to find \(P(C|F)\), the probability that the pen is in the pencil case given that Ted finds it. Using Bayes' theorem: