An urn contains 10 balls numbered from 1 to 10. Three balls are drawn without replacement. What is t

Manteo2h

Manteo2h

Answered question

2022-06-24

An urn contains 10 balls numbered from 1 to 10. Three balls are drawn without replacement. What is the probability that the drawn balls have numbers greater than 5?
I thought for the first ball, (6,7,8,9,10). The probability is 5/10. We took one, and for the second it is 4/9. And for the third one it is 3/8. Then we multiply these, and it is 1/12.
But I am not sure for this solution. I am confused.

Answer & Explanation

Nia Molina

Nia Molina

Beginner2022-06-25Added 21 answers

Step 1
Your answer is correct. Another way to look at the problem (and to arrive at the same answer) is the following counting argument: Since the order in which we draw the balls doesn't matter and we do not put the balls back we have ( 10 3 ) possible outcomes (number of ways to choose three elements out of ten elements where the order is irrelevant).
Step 2
Out of these ( 10 3 ) = 120
possible outcomes (which are all equally probable) we have exactly ( 5 3 ) = 10 outcomes which satisfy that all three balls have numbers greater than 5 (because this gives the number of ways to choose three balls from the numbers 6 to 10). The quotient ( 5 3 ) ( 10 3 ) = 1 12 gives us the answer.
Poftethef9t

Poftethef9t

Beginner2022-06-26Added 9 answers

Step 1
Your solution is correct.
Another approach is to note that there are ( 5 3 ) ways to select three of the five balls which are larger than 5 and ( 10 3 ) ways to select three of the ten balls, giving
Step 2
Pr ( three balls larger than  5 ) = ( 5 3 ) ( 10 3 ) = 10 120 = 1 12

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