How to compute this conditional probability?

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A person has two children. What is the probability that both children are boys ,given that:

a) The first children is a boy

b)at least one of them is a boy.

What I did is that I've translated the a part to:

$P[(A\cap B) / A]$. and considered that $P(A)=0.5$

Where, $A$ is the event that the first child is a boy. $B$ is the event that the second is a boy.

For the b part , I translated it into:

$P[(A\cap B)/(A\cup B)]$. And after some simplifications I found that it equals $\frac{P(A\cap B)}{P(A\cup B)}$. And I computed the probability of the union by the addition rule and got the answer.

Is that methodology right? If not, what is the correct way to solve this problem?

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Yes, you have it.

For (a) you want to find, as you note: $$\mathsf P(A\cap B\mid A) = \frac{\mathsf P(A\cap B)}{\mathsf P(A)}\qquad\color{green}\checkmark$$

The event that each child is a boy is independent of that of the other, so the multiplication rule takes the form of: $$\mathsf P(A \cap B) = \mathsf P(A)\;\mathsf P(B)$$


Likewise for (b) you do want: $$\mathsf P(A\cap B\mid A\cup B) = \frac{\mathsf P(A\cap B)}{\mathsf P(A\cup B)}\qquad\color{green}\checkmark$$

Now, the events that either child is a boy are not mutually exclusive, so the addition rule takes the form (often known as the Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion) of: $$\mathsf P(A\cup B) = \mathsf P(A)+ \mathsf P(B) - \mathsf P(A\cap B)$$


Just use $\mathsf P(A)=\mathsf P(B) \approx \frac 1 2$ and you're done.


Remark Another method is to simply list the possible outcomes

$$\{\mathop{\mathsf{\underbrace{\overbrace{BB, BG}, GB}, GG}}^\text{First child a boy}_\text{At least one child is a boy}\}$$

Since all outcomes are equally likely, we directly obtain the results: $$\begin{align}\mathsf P(A\cap B\mid A) & =\frac \Box \Box \\[1ex] \mathsf P(A\cap B\mid A\cup B) & = \frac \Box \Box\end{align}$$