Back to 3.2 Independent and Mutually Exclusive Events

3.2 Exercise 35

Avg difficulty 2.5

The probability that a male develops some form of cancer in his lifetime is .4567. The probability that a male has at least one false-positive test result, meaning the test comes back for cancer when the man does not have it, is .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 man develops cancer in his lifetime and P = a man 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 man has cancer? Justify numerically and explain why or why not.

OpenStax Statistics, 3.2 Independent and Mutually Exclusive Events, exercise 35

AI Tutor

Adapted from Statistics © 2022 Rice University. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source: Statistics. Imported at revision 7dea80a.