How does smashing a statue impact the odds that an object is hidden in one of the other statues in a set? The title is a bit confusing, I'm not sure of a better way to sum it up. Let's say there is a group of 5 statues and a missing jewel. There's a 50% chance that the jewel is hidden in one of the 5 statues. This should mean that there's a 10% chance it's in each individual statue. If you smash one statue and prove that the jewel is not hidden in the one you smashed, do the odds that the jewel is in each of the other statues increase, because there are only 4 left? Or do they decrease, because the jewel wasn't in the one you smashed?

The odds do in fact increase. For clarity imagine there are five other statues you can't see, and the jewel is actually hidden, with equal probability $\frac{1}{10}$, among all ten. Smashing one of the statues removes the possibility that the jewel is in that statue, so now the jewel must be hidden with equal probability $\frac{1}{9}$ among each of the remaining $9$ statues, and $\frac{1}{9} > \frac{1}{10}$.

So the odds that the jewel is in a specific other statue increase, however the odds that the jewel is hidden in a visible statue at all decreases from $\frac{5}{10}$ to $\frac{4}{9}$.