Question

A joint survey by Parade magazine and Yahoo! found that 59% of American workers say that if they could do it all over again, they would choose a different career (USA Today, September 24, 2012). The survey also found that 33% of American workers say they plan to retire early and 67% say they plan to wait and retire at age 65 or older. Assume that the following joint probability table applies. Excel File: data04-37.xls a. $aseb06h_ch04_ex37.png$

a. What is the probability a worker would select the same career (to 2 decimals)? .41

b. What is the probability a worker who would select the same career plans to retire early (to 4 decimals)? .4878

c. What is the probability a worker who would select a different career plans to retire early (to 4 decimals)?

d. What do the conditional probabilities in parts (b) and (c) suggest about the reasons workers say they would select the same career?

Answer 1

(a)

The probability a worker would select the same career is

P(same career) = 0.41

(b)

P(retire early |same career) = P(retire early and same career) / P(same career) = 0.20 /0.41 = 0.4878

(c)

The probability a worker who would select a different career plans to retire early is

P(retire early |different career) = P(retire early and different career) / P(different career) = 0.13 /0.59 = 0.2203

(d)

Beucase they want to retire early.