ABSTRACT
Probability lends itself to a variety of misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Few people would have difficulty understanding, at least in a practical sense, such statements as “The probability that a toss of a fair die will result in a 5 is 1/6,” and “The probability that the children in a five-child family are all boys is 1/32.” It is easy to describe fairly simple probabilistic situations, however, that can confuse, at least momentarily, even people with a considerable degree of mathematical sophistication. Usually careful reflection on the situation suffices to clarify it. The first few problems described in what follows are of this type.
