Question

You randomly choose one of the marbles. Without replacing the first marble, you choose a second marble. There are 4 marbles. One yellow, one red, one green, and one blue. Find the total number of possible outcomes.

Answer 1

12 total possible outcomes

Explanation:

To do this, we can use the Fundamental Counting principle, which is :

An event M has m possible outcomes. An event N has n possible outcomes. The total number of outcomes of event N followed by event N is m x n.

When you first pick up a marble (event M), there are 4 possible outcomes (yellow, red, green, blue). Since you do not replace the marble, when you pick the second time (event N) there are only 3 other possible colors.

As we know, m x n = to total possible outcomes.

So, 4 x 3 = 12 total possible outcomes.