Meet Lucy. She was a math major in college and aced all her courses in probability（可能性） and statistics. Which do you think is more likely? That Lucy is a portrait artist or that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker? In studies of similar questions, up to 80% of participants（参与者） chose the equivalent（等价物） of the second statement that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker. After all, nothing we know about Lucy suggests an affinity（密切关系） for art, but statistics and probability are useful in poker.

  And yet this is the wrong answer. Look at the options again. How do we know the first statement is more likely to be true? Because it's a less specific version of the second statement. Saying that Lucy is a portrait artist doesn't make any claims about what else she might or might not do. But even though it's far easier to imagine her playing poker than making art based on the background information, the second statement is only true if she does both of these things.

  However counterintuitive it seems to imagine Lucy as an artist, the second scenario（方案） adds another condition on top of that, making it less likely.