A company is focustesting a new type of snickers for college

A company is focus-testing a new type of snickers for college students. The focus group is made up of 47 males and 53 females. 35% of the males in the focus group said that they would buy the snickers and 45% of the females in the focus group said that they would buy the snickers. What is the probability that a randomly selected person would buy the snickers?

Solution

Let

M = male
F = female
S = buy snickers

Then by Bayes\' Rule,

P(S) = P(F) P(S|F) + P(M) P(S|M)

= 0.53*0.45 + 0.47*0.35

= 0.403 [ANSWER]