Question

On the island of liars each inhabitant lies with probability 2/3. You overhear an inhabitant making a statement. Next you ask another inhabitant whether the inhabitant you overheard spoke truthfully. Use Bayes rule to find the probability that the inhabitant you overheard indeed spoke truthfully given that the other inhabitant says so

Answer 1

Answer:

The probability that the inhabitant spoke thruthfully given than the other one says so is 1/4.

Step-by-step explanation:

Let A be the event 'the first inhabitant speaks the truth' and B the event the person you asked speaks the truth'

We have that

P(A) = P(B) = 1/3

The second person will say that the first person speaks the truth if:

- Both are lying

- Both are saying the truth

The probability that both inhabitants lies is 2/3 * 2/3 = 4/9

The probability that both inhabitants speaks the truth is 1/3² = 1/9

Therefore, in this problem, we want to know P(A ∩ B | (A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c) )

(note that, since the second persons says that A didnt lie, then in order for it to be true then the second person have to also say the truth).

We know that P(A ∩ B) = 1/9 and P((A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c)) = 4/9 + 1/9 = 5/9. Using the bayes formula we have

P(A ∩B | (A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c) ) = P((A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c) | A ∩ B) * P(A∩ B)/ P((A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c))

Note that P((A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c) | A∩B) = 1 because the condition is more restrictive than the probability we are asking for, therefore

P(A ∩B | (A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c) )  = P(A∩ B)/P((A∩ B) ∪ (A^c ∩ B^c))  = (1/9) / (4/9) = 1/4.

The probability that the inhabitant spoke thruthfully given than the other one says so is 1/4.