Hopefully a simple probability question: I have 35 apples, 13 are red and 22 are green. I have to pick 17 with a blindfold on.

[Jammyd]

Hi,

I’m hoping someone can give me the answer to this question, workings out are very welcome as I am interested in to how it’s done. I’m having an issue at work and am trying to work out the chances of something happening, I have broke it down into hopefully a simpler form and have framed it as the following.

I have 35 apples, 13 are red and 22 are green. I have to pick 17 with a blindfold on. At the end of this process I have picked 12 red apples and 5 green apples. can anyone tell me what is the chance/probability of that happening? It doesn’t matter what order I pick them just at the end of the process I have 12 red and 5 green.

Not sure how easy or difficult this is to work out but hopefully someone better educated than me can help.

Regards

Jamie

 

[stapel]

I’m hoping someone can give me the answer to this question, workings out are very welcome as I am interested in to how it’s done. I’m having an issue at work and am trying to work out the chances of something happening, I have broke it down into hopefully a simpler form and have framed it as the following.

I have 35 apples, 13 are red and 22 are green. I have to pick 17 with a blindfold on. At the end of this process I have picked 12 red apples and 5 green apples. can anyone tell me what is the chance/probability of that happening? It doesn’t matter what order I pick them just at the end of the process I have 12 red and 5 green.

Not sure how easy or difficult this is to work out but hopefully someone better educated than me can help.

We'll be glad to help! But, as you saw in the "Read Before Posting" message, we'll first need to see where you're getting stuck. So please reply with a clear listing of your thoughts and efforts so far, at which point we can begin to work with you.

Thank you!

 

[BigBeachBanana]

Hi,

I’m hoping someone can give me the answer to this question, workings out are very welcome as I am interested in to how it’s done. I’m having an issue at work and am trying to work out the chances of something happening, I have broke it down into hopefully a simpler form and have framed it as the following.

I have 35 apples, 13 are red and 22 are green. I have to pick 17 with a blindfold on. At the end of this process I have picked 12 red apples and 5 green apples. can anyone tell me what is the chance/probability of that happening? It doesn’t matter what order I pick them just at the end of the process I have 12 red and 5 green.

Not sure how easy or difficult this is to work out but hopefully someone better educated than me can help.

Regards

Jamie

You can frame the question as a binomial distribution.

 

[Dr.Peterson]

I'll repeat my answer to your first post here:

Say I have 50 cats, 13 are ginger and 37 are tabby. I need to pick 17 out at random. What is the probability as a percentage that out of the 17 I pick 12 will be ginger?

My maths isn’t very good, it’s why I drive a truck for a living lol, but hopefully this will be fairly easy for someone better educated.

First, some context would be helpful: If this isn't for school, what is it for? Our goal is to help you learn, so we need to have some idea what you know, that we could help you use. (We don't give complete answers, unless it is clear that you have a reason other than education.)

Also, the context may tell us whether you need exactly 12 ginger, or perhaps at least 12, or at most 12, which may be more useful. [This is particularly important if, say, you are trying to show that someone did something wrong, such as bias in hiring or firing, and these numbers are the evidence.]

As for the work, if you know anything about combinations, you can find the number of ways to choose 12 of 13 G's, and the number of ways to choose 5 of 37 T's. Then you can multiply these together, and divide by the total number of ways to choose 17 out of 50 cats, ignoring types (treating the cats as distinguishable, but ignoring order).

Or, if you just want a formula (which you probably would not have learned), you can look up the hypergeometric distribution.

 

[Jammyd]

I'll repeat my answer to your first post here:


First, some context would be helpful: If this isn't for school, what is it for? Our goal is to help you learn, so we need to have some idea what you know, that we could help you use. (We don't give complete answers, unless it is clear that you have a reason other than education.)

Also, the context may tell us whether you need exactly 12 ginger, or perhaps at least 12, or at most 12, which may be more useful. [This is particularly important if, say, you are trying to show that someone did something wrong, such as bias in hiring or firing, and these numbers are the evidence.]

As for the work, if you know anything about combinations, you can find the number of ways to choose 12 of 13 G's, and the number of ways to choose 5 of 37 T's. Then you can multiply these together, and divide by the total number of ways to choose 17 out of 50 cats, ignoring types (treating the cats as distinguishable, but ignoring order).

Or, if you just want a formula (which you probably would not have learned), you can look up the hypergeometric distribution.

 

[Jammyd]

I can’t reply for some reason, hopefully this way will work.