Back to 3.2 Independent and Mutually Exclusive Events

3.2 Exercise 36

Avg difficulty 2.5

The probability that a person develops cancer is 0.4567. The probability that a person has at least one false positive test result (meaning the test comes back for cancer when the person does not have it) is 0.51. Some of the following questions do not have enough information for you to answer them. Write “not enough information” for those answers. Let C = a person develops cancer and P = a person has at least one false positive.

  1. P(C) = ______
  2. P(P|C) = ______
  3. P(P|C') = ______
  4. If a test comes up positive, based upon numerical values, can you assume that a male has cancer? Justify numerically and explain why or why not.

OpenStax Introductory Statistics 2e, 3.2 Independent and Mutually Exclusive Events, exercise 36

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Adapted from Introductory Statistics 2e © 2023 Rice University. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source: Introductory Statistics 2e. Imported at revision 50ec917.