Final answer:
The probability of drawing a heart or a spade from a standard 52-card deck is 1/2, since the two events are mutually exclusive and each has a probability of 13/52, summing to 26/52 or 0.5.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student is asking about the probability of drawing a single card from a standard 52-card deck. Since each suit (hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs) contains 13 cards, the probability of drawing a heart (H) or a spade (S) is the sum of the individual probabilities: 13/52 for hearts and 13/52 for spades.
Because these events are mutually exclusive (a card cannot be both a heart and a spade), the probability can be calculated by simply adding these two probabilities together, resulting in 26/52, which simplifies to 1/2 or a probability of 0.5.