Suppose that a survey asked 500 families with three children to disclose the gender of their children and found that 180 of the families had two boys and one girl.

(a) Estimate the probability of having two boys and one girl in a three-child family using the empirical method.

(b) Compute and interpret the probability of having two boys and one girl in a three child family using the classical method, assuming boys and girls are equally likely.

Approach To answer part (a), determine the relative frequency of the event “two boys and one girl.” To answer part (b), count the number of ways the event “two boys and one girl” can occur and divide this by the number of possible outcomes for this experiment.