Did he know the answer?

In answering a question on MCQ test with 4 choices per question, a student either knows the answer or guesses or copies the answer. Let 1 2 \cfrac { 1 }{ 2 } be the probability that he knows the answer, 1 4 \cfrac { 1 }{ 4 } be the probability that he guesses and 1 4 \cfrac { 1 }{ 4 } be the probability that he copies it.

Assuming that a student who copies the answer has a 3 4 \cfrac { 3 }{ 4 } probability to be right, what is the probability that the student knows the answer, given that he answered it correctly? Give your answer to 3 decimal places.


The answer is 0.6666666666.

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3 solutions

Suppose there are 80 questions on the test. Based on the given information, he will know the answer to 40 questions (all correct), will guess on 20 questions (because there are 4 choices per question, he will get 5 of these correct), and he will copy 20 questions (he will get 15 of these correct). That makes a total of 40+5+15 = 60 questions correct, out of which he knew the answer to 40. Answer is 40/60 = 2/3.

Nice! Sometimes its hard to think so straight...

Pawan Kumar - 6 years, 2 months ago
Pawan Kumar
Mar 17, 2015

R R = student is R R ight

K K = student K K nows the answer

Given that student either knows the answer (with success probability 1), guesses it (with success probability 1 4 \frac{1}{4} ) or copies it (with success probability 3 4 \frac{3}{4} )

P ( R ) = 1 2 × 1 + 1 4 × 1 4 + 1 4 × 3 4 = 3 4 P(R) = \frac{1}{2} \times 1 + \frac{1}{4} \times \frac{1}{4} + \frac{1}{4} \times \frac{3}{4} = \frac{3}{4}

P ( K ) = 1 2 P(K) = \frac{1}{2}

P ( R K ) = 1 P(R|K) = 1

P ( K R ) = P ( R K ) × P ( K ) P ( R ) = 1 × 1 2 3 4 = 2 3 P(K|R) = \frac{P(R|K) \times P(K)}{P(R)} = \frac{1 \times \frac{1}{2}}{\frac{3}{4}} = \frac{2}{3}

Kevin Zhang
Mar 16, 2015

The probability of him getting it right is (1/2)*1 + (1/4)(1/4) + (1/4)(3/4) = 12/16 = 3/4. Then the probability of him knowing the answer is (1/2)/(3/4) = 2/3, by sample spaces.

This can easily be done using Bayes' Theorem.Creating a sample space will make it time consuming.

Rajdeep Dhingra - 6 years, 2 months ago

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But this method is way more intuitive. I did it in 20 seconds.

Jake Lai - 6 years, 2 months ago

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