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The two child problem



For the "two child problem":

A man has two children, the older is a son.
A woman has two children, one of which is a son
Which is more likely to have two sons?

There is one solution, not excluded by the statement of the problem, which
I do not recall having seen mentioned, viz: that the man and the woman are
married to each other and the children are their own. In which case the
answer is clear.

One is reminded of the story about a man and his son who are in a car
accident in which the son is severely injured and is rushed to a nearby
hospital. The surgeon who is to operate on the boy walks into the
operating room, takes one look at the boy and says "I can not operate on
this boy, he is my son." The question is: How is this possible?

In each case we learn that it is useful to examine our tacit assumptions
about what we have been told.