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Message: <blockquote data-quote="2WS-Steve" data-source="post: 352234" data-attributes="member: 3289">The "common mistake" here is actually correct. Think about it this way, would you consider betting $2 to win $1 that the man's other child was male a fair bet? Because that's what the above reasoning implies. In these sorts of decisions how you update your probabilities based on new information is pretty important; in some decision theory problems there isn't even a good solution.In this one though we can appeal to the brute fact that generally there's a 50/50 chance of any given child being male.Also, consider a similar example where someone asks you what's the chance of two coin flips coming up the same. Should you revise your probabilities after the first coin flip?edit: to fix embarassing math mistake where I said $3 to win $2</blockquote>