Personally, I find that the ambiguity and phrasing of the question is what leads to pedantic 'gotchas'.
9017 children are born and 4263 are female while the remainder are male; what's the probability that the next child born is female?
It's 50%, if one assumes a bimodal distribution without atypical karyotypic deviations. Preceding births do not determine future births. They are causally independent events.
1245 of those children were born on Friday; what's the probability that the next child is male?
Still 50%. Week day of birth does not impact sex distribution.
It's the way the question is worded that splits this into an intuitive biological problem or an obtuse probability problem.
Personally, I find that the ambiguity and phrasing of the question is what leads to pedantic 'gotchas'.
9017 children are born and 4263 are female while the remainder are male; what's the probability that the next child born is female?
It's 50%, if one assumes a bimodal distribution without atypical karyotypic deviations. Preceding births do not determine future births. They are causally independent events.
1245 of those children were born on Friday; what's the probability that the next child is male?
Still 50%. Week day of birth does not impact sex distribution.
It's the way the question is worded that splits this into an intuitive biological problem or an obtuse probability problem.