If I were dying in my bed, I probably wouldn’t even think to increase my probability that a friend had died just because no-one would have told me if they had.
There is something intuitively wrong with that statement. If you do not gain any new information, your probability calculation should not change. If the probability of not being told of a friend’s death is approximately the same either way, there should be little update, and any miniscule update would intuitively be in the direction of ‘If someone were dead, I’d be told’. So I did a rough (very very rough) calculation using the general idea that someone is unlikely to tell Dying You if a friend is dead if they are, and even more unlikely to tell Dying You that a friend is dead when they aren’t. (That’s just not funny, dude.)
p(friend is dead given someone tells Dying You that they’re dead) = p(friend is dead) p(no one tells you your friend is dead)/
p(same as above) + p(no one tells you a friend is dead) p(friend is not dead)
Same is true even for higher values of ‘likelihood that a friend dies’.
0.173913043 = (0.2 x 0.8) / ((0.2 x 0.8) + (0.95 x .8))
0.457142857 = (0.5 x 0.8) / ((0.5 x 0.8) + (0.95 x .5))
I’m tempted to adjust the other probabilities for 50%, though. If death is so common among my peers anyways then my friends would probably be more likely to tell me.
EDIT: Haha, I forgot the multiplication sign is used for formatting. Woops.
There is something intuitively wrong with that statement. If you do not gain any new information, your probability calculation should not change. If the probability of not being told of a friend’s death is approximately the same either way, there should be little update, and any miniscule update would intuitively be in the direction of ‘If someone were dead, I’d be told’. So I did a rough (very very rough) calculation using the general idea that someone is unlikely to tell Dying You if a friend is dead if they are, and even more unlikely to tell Dying You that a friend is dead when they aren’t. (That’s just not funny, dude.)
0.00843437006 = (0.01x0.8)/((0.01x0.8)+(0.95x.99))
p(friend is dead given someone tells Dying You that they’re dead) = p(friend is dead) p(no one tells you your friend is dead)/ p(same as above) + p(no one tells you a friend is dead) p(friend is not dead)
Same is true even for higher values of ‘likelihood that a friend dies’.
0.173913043 = (0.2 x 0.8) / ((0.2 x 0.8) + (0.95 x .8))
0.457142857 = (0.5 x 0.8) / ((0.5 x 0.8) + (0.95 x .5))
I’m tempted to adjust the other probabilities for 50%, though. If death is so common among my peers anyways then my friends would probably be more likely to tell me.
EDIT: Haha, I forgot the multiplication sign is used for formatting. Woops.