Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2002 / iii / Paper 42 / 3 / ii

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 $y$, these disjoint possibilities have conditional probabilities $g(y{)}^2$ and $2g(y)w(y)$. The conditional evolved-companion fraction in a coeval binary population therefore has numeratorDivide by the fraction $299/30000$ of systems containing at least one giant:Thus just over $3\%$ of giant-containing binaries have an evolved companion. The $0.03\%$ numerator is a fraction of all binaries; it is not itself the requested conditional fraction.