In the United States, 46% of all children get an allowance and 21% of all children get an allowance and do household chores. What is the probability that a child does household chores given that the child gets an allowance? I'd appreciate it if you could explain how you got your answer.

Verified Answer :

Let \(A\) denote the event that a child has an allowance, and \(B\) that a child does chores.

The definition of conditional probability says that

\(\mathbb P(B|A)=\dfrac{\mathbb P(B\cap A)}{\mathbb P(A)}\)

Assuming the events are independent, you could expand the numerator as \(\mathbb P(B\cap A)=\mathbb P(B)\times\mathbb P(A)\). Otherwise, you would need to know that exact probability.

You're given that \(\mathbb P(A)=46\%\), while \(\mathbb P(B\cap A)=21\%\).

So, the desired conditional probability is

\(\mathbb P(B|A)=\dfrac{21\%}{46\%}\approx45.65\$\)