[dinosaur]

No, I don't think the label "picked up from a police station" affects the problem the way you are thinking. What I believe you are not accounting for is that there are twice as many mixed families in the population as there are pure girl families.

Take 1000 two-child families (so as to intuitively ignore fluctuations). Families 1-250 are girl-girl, 251-500 had a girl then a boy, and 501-750 had a boy then a girl. Any of those 750 families could have made the quote in my post, yet there are 500 families with boy-girl, and 250 with girl-girl.

Or another example that I think speaks more directly to your post: you see a woman with a T-shirt reading "Proud Mother of Two" next to a girl who is obviously her daughter. What is the probability of her other child being a boy? Again, since there are twice as many mixed families as pure girl families, the odds are 2/3.

[seano]

"Or another example that I think speaks more directly to your post: you see a woman with a T-shirt reading "Proud Mother of Two" next to a girl who is obviously her daughter. What is the probability of her other child being a boy? Again, since there are twice as many mixed families as pure girl families, the odds are 2/3."

The odds are 50%, do you seriously think different?

Your mistake is that in families 1-250 the girl next to the mother could be either daughter.

In families 1-750 there are 1000 daughters, the daughter standing next to the mother is equally likely to be any of those and half have brothers, half have sisters.

[dinosaur]

Sorry; you are definitely right about that. I was so focused on the mom with the T-shirt that I did not even think about being able to count the states with the girl, but yes, the answer is obviously 50%.