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A bag of marbles has 12 red, 7 yellow, 5 blue and 1 white. Find the probability of selecting 4 marbles from the bag where all 4 are red.

User AlexCon
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1 Answer

5 votes

There are 25 marbles: (12 red, 7 yellow, 5 blue, 1 white)

The probability of the first marble being red is 12/25 because there are 12 red marbles still available and no marbles are missing

The probability of the second marble being red is 11/24 because only 11 red marbles are available and 1 marble has already been selected from the pile

The probability of the third marble being red is 10/23 because only 10 red marbles are available and 2 marbles have already been selected from the pile

The probability of the fourth marble being red is 9/22 because only 9 red marbles are available and 3 marbles have already been selected from the pile

Since we are interested in all of these events occurring simultaneously, we must multiply the probability of all 4 events, like so:


(12)/(25) * (11)/(24) * (10)/(23) * (9)/(22)

Solving for this we are left with:


(9)/(230) \: \: or \: \: 0.0391