Asked by Avery Williams

Justine and Lisa get on a roller coaster together and pick seats. Lisa picks a seat after Justine does.

Are these two events dependent or independent?

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Dependent.

Reason: Lisa's choice is affected by which seat Justine took — if Justine sits in a seat, Lisa cannot take that same seat, so conditional probabilities change. For example, with n seats:
- P(Lisa picks seat j) = 1/n,
- P(Lisa picks seat j | Justine picked seat j) = 0,
so P(Lisa picks j | Justine picked j) ≠ P(Lisa picks j), hence the events are dependent.