Reference no: EM131680386

Question: Consider the following conversation from an episode of The Simpsons: Lisa: Dad, I think he's an ivory dealer! His boots are ivory, his hat is ivory, and I'm pretty sure that check is ivory. Homer: Lisa, a guy who has lots of ivory is less likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low. Here Homer and Lisa are debating the question of whether or not the man (named Blackheart) is likely to hurt Stampy the Elephant if they sell Stampy to him. They clearly disagree about how to use their observations about Blackheart to learn about the probability (conditional on the evidence) that Blackheart will hurt Stampy.

(a) Define clear notation for the various events of interest here.

(b) Express Lisa's and Homer's arguments (Lisa's is partly implicit) as conditional probability statements in terms of your notation from (a).

(c) Assume it is true that someone who has a lot of a commodity will have less desire to acquire more of the commodity. Explain what is wrong with Homer's reasoning that the evidence about Blackheart makes it less likely that he will harm Stampy.