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11.2: Conditional Probability (Section 10.4)

  • Page ID
    8782
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    Let’s determine the conditional probability of someone being unhealthy, given that they are over 70 years of age, using the NHANES dataset. Let’s create a new data frame that

    healthDataFrame <-
      NHANES %>%
      mutate(
        Over70 = Age > 70,
        Unhealthy = DaysPhysHlthBad > 0
      ) %>%
      dplyr::select(Unhealthy, Over70) %>%
      drop_na()
    
    glimpse(healthDataFrame)
    ## Observations: 4,891
    ## Variables: 2
    ## $ Unhealthy <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE,…
    ## $ Over70    <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALS…

    First, what’s the probability of being over 70?

    pOver70 <- 
      healthDataFrame %>%
      summarise(pOver70 = mean(Over70)) %>% 
      pull()
    
    # to obtain the specific value, we need to extract it from the data frame
    
    pOver70
    ## [1] 0.11

    Second, what’s the probability of being unhealthy?

    pUnhealthy <- 
      healthDataFrame %>%
      summarise(pUnhealthy = mean(Unhealthy)) %>% 
      pull()
    
    pUnhealthy
    ## [1] 0.36

    What’s the probability for each combination of unhealthy/healthly and over 70/ not? We can create a new variable that finds the joint probability by multiplying the two individual binary variables together; since anything times zero is zero, this will only have the value 1 for any case where both are true.

    pBoth <- healthDataFrame %>% 
      mutate(
        both = Unhealthy*Over70
      ) %>%
      summarise(
        pBoth = mean(both)) %>% 
      pull()
    
    pBoth
    ## [1] 0.043

    Finally, what’s the probability of someone being unhealthy, given that they are over 70 years of age?

    pUnhealthyGivenOver70 <-
      healthDataFrame %>%
      filter(Over70 == TRUE) %>% # limit to Over70
      summarise(pUnhealthy = mean(Unhealthy)) %>% 
      pull()
    
    pUnhealthyGivenOver70
    ## [1] 0.38
    # compute the opposite:
    # what the probability of being over 70 given that 
    # one is unhealthy?
    pOver70givenUnhealthy <-
      healthDataFrame %>%
      filter(Unhealthy == TRUE) %>% # limit to Unhealthy
      summarise(pOver70 = mean(Over70)) %>% 
      pull()
    
    pOver70givenUnhealthy
    ## [1] 0.12

    This page titled 11.2: Conditional Probability (Section 10.4) is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Russell A. Poldrack via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.