I was reading a book about innumeracy and one of the chapters was on probability. This weather woman said 'there is a 50% chance of rain on Saturday, and a 50% chance of rain on Sunday, so the chance of rain this weekend is 100%'
Obviously she was wrong, but it got me thinking how would one calculate the probability of rain that weekend?
I decided to make it simpler by saying P(rain on Saturday) = 0.5 and P(rain on Sunday) = 1.0
This obviously means that P(rain this weekend) = 1.0
I then used trial and error to calculate the chance of rain that weekend
I started with P(rain on Saturday) x P(rain on Sunday) but that gives 0.5
Then I tried P(no rain this weekend) = P(no rain on Saturday) x P(no rain on Sunday) and this gives 0.0
Therefore P(rain this weekend) = 1 - P(no rain this weekend) = 1.0
Using this method, P(rain this weekend) = 0.75 or 75% for the original statement.
Is this the best way to calculate the chance of rain?
Obviously she was wrong, but it got me thinking how would one calculate the probability of rain that weekend?
I decided to make it simpler by saying P(rain on Saturday) = 0.5 and P(rain on Sunday) = 1.0
This obviously means that P(rain this weekend) = 1.0
I then used trial and error to calculate the chance of rain that weekend
I started with P(rain on Saturday) x P(rain on Sunday) but that gives 0.5
Then I tried P(no rain this weekend) = P(no rain on Saturday) x P(no rain on Sunday) and this gives 0.0
Therefore P(rain this weekend) = 1 - P(no rain this weekend) = 1.0
Using this method, P(rain this weekend) = 0.75 or 75% for the original statement.
Is this the best way to calculate the chance of rain?