Question

You randomly select 500 students and observe that 85 of them smoke. What is your estimate of the probability that a randomly selected student smokes?

Answer 1

17% probability that a randomly selected student smokes.

Explanation:

A probability is the number of desired outcomes divided by the number of total outcomes.

What is your estimate of the probability that a randomly selected student smokes?

This estiamte is the number of smoking students divided by the total number of students.

We have that:

There are 500 students.

85 smoke

So there is an 85/500 = 0.17 = 17% probability that a randomly selected student smokes.