Question

A bag contains 12 M&Ms with 8 being red. If two M&Ms are selected without replacement, what is the probability that exactly 1 M&M is red?

Answer 1

We know the probability of an event is given by:

We first find the total no. of outcomes of the experiment. Here we're selecting two M&Ms thus total no. of ways is

Now we want exactly 1 M&M is red i.e. exactly 1 red M&M is selected out of total 8 red M&Ms and other M&M is selected from the remaining four M&Ms. Thus the number of ways

= (selecting 1 red M&M from 8 red M&Ms)*(selecting 1 non-red M&M from remaining four M&Ms)

=

Thus the probability of this event is: 32/66 =0.485