Healthful Habits Statistics

Question

If 10% of the males of a population smoke cigars, and if 10% of the females of the same population smoke cigarettes, and if the probability of a mental birth impairment is 0.0 for neither parent smoking, 0.2 for one parent smoking only, and 0.6 for both parents smoking, what is the probability of a mental birth impairment for the child of a randomly selected (male + female)-parented offspring?

Answer 1

1. Find the Probabilities of the smoking vs nonsmoking parents.

2. Identify the Probabilities of mental birth impairments for each given situation.

3. Recall: P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B)

P(A and B) = P(A) x P(B)

Find the probability of each kind of pairing.by multiplying.

4. Find the total probability of mental birth impairment by multiplying the probability of each kind of pairing to the respective probability of impairment. Add these products together for the total.

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