Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/631

Rh of inhabitants to a dwelling in New York. The same person cannot inhabit two dwellings. If he divide his time between two dwellings he ought to be counted a half-inhabitant of each. In this case we have only to divide the total number of the inhabitants of New York by the number of their dwellings, without the necessity of counting separately those which inhabit each one. A similar proceeding will apply wherever each individual relate belongs to one individual correlate exclusively. If we want the number of x ' s per y, and no x belongs to more than one y, we have only to divide the whole number of x ' s of y ' s by the number of y ' s. Such a method would, of course, fail if applied to finding the average number of street-car passengers per trip. We could not divide the total number of travelers by the number of trips, since many of them would have made many passages. To find the probability that from a given class of premises, A, a given class of conclusions, B, follow, it is simply necessary to ascertain what proportion of the times in which premises of that class are true, the appropriate conclusions are also true. In other words, it is the number of cases of the occurrence of both the events A and B, divided by the total number of cases of the occurrence of the event A.

II.—Addition of Relative Numbers.—Given two relative numbers having the same correlate, say the number of x ' s per y, and the number of z ' s per y; it is required to find the number of x ' s and z ' s together per y. If there is nothing which is at once an x and a z to the same y, the sum of the two given numbers would give the required number. Suppose, for example, that we had given the average number of friends that men have, and the average number of enemies, the sum of these two is the average number of persons interested in a man. On the other hand, it plainly would not do to add the average number of persons having constitutional diseases to the average number over military age, and to the average number exempted by each special cause from military service, in order to get the average number exempt in any way, since many are exempt in two or more ways at once.

This rule applies directly to probabilities. Given the probability that two different and mutually exclusive events will happen under the same supposed set of circumstances. Given, for instance, the probability that if A then B, and also the probability that if A then C, then the sum of these two probabilities is the probability that if A then either B or C, so long as there is no event which belongs at once to the two classes B and C.

III.—Multiplication of Relative Numbers.—Suppose that we have given the relative number of x ' s per y also the relative number of z ' s per x of y; or, to take a concrete example, suppose that we have given, first, the average number of children in families living in