I heard these numbers somewhere at school.
About 10% of the population is left-handed. About 10% of the population is gay. About 2% of the population is both gay and left-handed.
Does that mean being left-handed decreases your chances of being gay?
I'm only asking statistically I really don't care about your opinions on gays or lefties.
2006-10-04 14:09:37 · 5 answers · asked by micky_baxter 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
This may have been answered already, but I don't think it has been explained clearly. Think of these %'s as being probabilities, then if being left-handed and being gay were statistically independent the probability of being both would just be the product of the two independent probabilities. In the case of being gay and left-handed, using your numbers, that would be 0.1 times 0.1 = 0.01. If the observed fraction were less than 0.01 that would suggest what you're saying - that being left-handed decreases your chances of being gay. Since the actual observed fraction is 0.02, which is greater than 0.01, that suggests just the opposite - that being left-handed increases your chances of being gay; at least in this population.
2006-10-04 16:13:41 · answer #1 · answered by pollux 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it's a logic thingy... all it's saying is that just because 10% of the population is gay and 10% is left-handed, doesn't mean those 10% coincide...
2006-10-04 14:21:35 · answer #2 · answered by Curious Blair 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it would mean 8 out of 90 people is righty and gay (8.89% of righties are gay) and 10 out of 100 are lefties, 2 of them gay. so 2 out of 10 lefties are gay (20%) wich would mean that lefties have more than double the chances of righties of being gay.
2006-10-04 14:19:49 · answer #3 · answered by alexqr79 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think the answer is no.
P(left-handed) = 0.1, P(right-handed) = 0.9
P(gay) = 0.1, P(straight) = 0.9
P(left-handed ∩ gay) = 0.02
P(left-handed ∩ straight) = 0.08
P(right-handed ∩ gay) = 0.08
P(right-handed ∩ straight) = 0.82
0.08/ 0.9 ~ 1/11
1 out of every 5 lefthanded is gay
1 out of every 11 righthanded is gay
So it actually increases the probability.
2006-10-04 14:25:50 · answer #4 · answered by buaya123 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It just means that you don't have to be gay to be left-handed or vice-versa.
2006-10-04 14:17:50 · answer #5 · answered by Sergio__ 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋