What’s the probability of something, given something else? This is a Baysian question. Bayes’ Theorem provides a way of how to calculate a conditional probability.

John’s flue-probabilities

What is the probability of John having the flue? He works in a company of 50 employees of which 30 are females and 20 are males. Initially, we are told that one of the staffs has the flue, so John has a 1/50 probability of being the one with the flue.

Now, we are given a new information. We are told that the one having the flue is a male. What is now the probability that it is John who has the flue? We see that the probability of being John who has the flue has increased to 1/20 from the previous 1/50. The sample space has been reduced from 50 to 20.

Bayes’ Theorem formula

Bayes’ Theorem gives a formula that helps calculating these conditional probabilities. Let’s use it for this simple case:

Let’s use the Bayes Theorem formula in the following example:

Hprobabilitis example

One morning I feel bad. I have a headache and a runny nose, so I start Googling in the search of some exotic illness that matches my symptoms. I find it! My illness is called Hprobabilitis and is probably the most hypothetic illness ever heard of.

I get frustrated thinking that I know that I have Hprobabilitis, and even more as I further read that the probability of having just the symptoms that I have, given that I have the illness, is 95%. Really, what this says is:

“If you have this illness you are most likely to have the symptoms”.

This seems realistic to me and a hypothetic and hypocritic panic is creeping up on me.

I further read that Hprobabilitis is outmost rare and that only 1 in 100,000 has it and that the probability of having the symptoms that I have, is ‘pretty normal’. It is one in a hundred: 0.01.

I start defining:

• P(H) = The probability that I have Hprobabilitis = 0.00001
• P(S|H) = The probability of having my symptoms given that I have Hprobabilitis: 0.95
• P(S) = The probability of having these symptoms = 0.01

Plugging these data into the Bayes’ Theorem formula:

My risk of having Hprobabilitis is less than 0.001%.

Learning resources on Bayes’ Theorem

Thanks Ian Olasov  for your khanacademy video: Bayes Theorem. The two examples above are inspired on your video. Ian Olasov’s Linkedin profile.