Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2002/iii/paper-42/3/ii/solution

A system containing a red giant and another evolved component is either a giant–giant pair or an unordered giant–white dwarf pair. At common age , these disjoint possibilities have conditional probabilities and . The conditional evolved-companion fraction in a coeval binary population therefore has numerator
Divide by the fraction of systems containing at least one giant:
Thus just over of giant-containing binaries have an evolved companion. The numerator is a fraction of all binaries; it is not itself the requested conditional fraction.

New to topics? Read the docs here!