Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2007/paper-1/section-b/4/b/solution

Let , , and denote the three disjoint categories, and or the test result. The law of total probability gives
To calculate the requested conditional probability, first combine the two categories with the virus. Their joint negative-test probability is , whereas . Bayes' theorem therefore gives
These numbers use the specified population proportions and test probabilities; the negative result reduces the initial combined proportion to about within this model.

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