Question

Suppose that you have 4 shirts (red, green, blue, yellow) and 3 pairs of shoes (black, brown, red). If you choose your shirt and shoes randomly, what is the probability that your shirt and shoes will NOT be the same color?

Answer 1

There are 4*3 = 12 different outfits to pick. Imagine laying out a grid where you can list all of the possible choices for the outfit. Think of it like a multiplication table. It might be a handy way to visually sort everything out.

Of these 12 combos, only 1 has your shirt and shoes matching in color. This is when you pick the red shirt and red shoes. The other 12-1 = 11 outfits will not match.

The probability that you do not pick the same color shirt and shoes is 11/12 (exact fraction form) since there are 11 cases of nonmatching outfits out of 12 total. This is approximately equal to 0.9167 in decimal form which converts to 91.67%