HOW TO CALCULATE PROBABILITIES

Solved Practice Problems on Probability

1: There are 8 balls in a container, 4 are red, 1 is
yellow and 3 are blue. What is the probability of
picking a yellow ball?

Probability is equal to the number of

yellow balls in the container divided by
the total number of balls in the container,
2: A dice is rolled. What is the probability that an even
number has been obtained?
How many possible outcomes?
When fair six-sided
dice are rolled, there
are six possible
outcomes:
How many odd and1, even
2, 3, 4, 5,
numbers?
or (2,
Out of these, half are even 6.4, 6) and half are odd (1, 3,
5). Therefore, the probability of getting an even number
is:
P(even) = number of even outcomes / total number of
outcomes
P(even) = 3 / 6
P(even) = 1/2
3: A fair six-sided die is rolled. What is the
probability of rolling a number greater than 4?
Answer in percentage.

There are 2 favorable outcomes (5

and 6) out of 6 possible outcomes.
Probability = Number of favorable
outcomes / Total number of
outcomes.
4: A jar contains 3 red, 4 blue, and 5 green
marbles. What is the probability of randomly
drawing a red marble?
Total marbles = 3 (red) + 4 (blue) + 5 (green) =
12.

Probability of drawing a red marble =

Number of red marbles / Total number of
marbles.
= 3 / 12 = 1 / 4 = 0.25 or 25%.
5: From a deck of 52 cards, what is the probability of
drawing an ace or a king?

There are 4 aces and 4 kings in the deck.

Total favorable outcomes = 4 (aces) + 4
(kings) = 8.
Probability = Number of favorable
outcomes / Total number of outcomes.
= 8 / 52 = 2 / 13 ≈ 0.1538 or 15.38%.
What is the probability of getting an
even number when a fair six-sided
die is rolled?
There are 3 even numbers on a die (2,
4, 6).
Total outcomes = 6.
Probability of rolling an even number =
Number of even numbers / Total
outcomes.
7: In a class of 20 students, 12 are girls.
What is the probability of randomly
selecting a boy?
Total students = 20.
Number of boys = Total students -
Number of girls = 20 - 12 = 8.
Probability of selecting a boy = Number
of boys / Total students.
= 8 / 20 = 2 / 5 = 0.4 or 40%.
8: A spinner with numbers 1 to 5 is spun once. What
is the probability of getting an odd number?

The number of favorable outcomes are: 1, 3,

and 5.
Total outcomes = 5
Probability = Number of favorable
outcomes / Total outcomes.
9: What is the probability of not drawing a face card
(Jack, Queen, King) from a standard deck of 52 cards?

Total face cards in the deck = 12 (4 Jacks, 4

Queens, 4 Kings).
Total non-face cards = 52 - 12 = 40.

Probability of not drawing a face card =

Number of non-face cards / Total cards.
= 40 / 52 = 10 / 13 ≈ 0.7692 or 76.92%.
10: A jar contains 10 balls: 3 red
and 7 black. What is the
probability of drawing a red ball
on a single draw?
Probability of drawing a red
ball and replacing it = 3/10.
Total probability = (3/10) =0.3
or 30%.
11: In a class of 60 students, 30 are boys. If one
student is randomly selected, what is the
probability of selecting a girl?

Total girls = 60 - 30 = 30.

Probability of chosen student
being a girl = 30/60.
= 0.5 or 50%
Suppose we draw a card from a deck of playing
cards. What is the probability that we draw a
spade?
The sample space of this experiment consists of 52 cards,
and the probability of each sample point is 1/52.

Since there are 13 spades in the deck, the probability of

drawing a spade is P(Spade) = (13/52) = 1/4
Suppose a coin is flipped 3 times. What is the probability
of getting two tails and one head?

Solution: For this experiment, the sample space consists of 8 sample

points. S = {TTT, TTH, THT, THH, HTT, HTH, HHT, HHH} Each sample point is
equally likely to occur, so the probability of getting any particular sample
point is 1/8.
The event "getting two tails and one head" consists of the following subset of the
sample space. A = {TTH, THT, HTT}
The probability of Event A is the sum of the probabilities of the sample
points in A.

Therefore, P(A) = 1/8 + 1/8 + 1/8 = 3/8

10% of the bulbs produced in a factory are of red colour and 2% are
red and defective. If one bulb is picked up at random, determine the
probability of its being defective if it is red.

Solution Let A and B be the events that the bulb is red and
defective, respectively.

P (A) = = 10/100 = 1/10 P(BA)=P(AB)/P(A)

P (A B) = = 2/100=1/50
= 1/50 x 10/1 = 1/5
Two dice are thrown together. Let A be the event ‘getting 6
on the first die’ and B be the event ‘getting 2 on the
second die’. Are the events A and B independent?
Solution: A = {(6, 1), (6, 2), (6, 3), (6, 4), (6, 5), (6, 6)}
B = {(1, 2), (2, 2), (3, 2), (4, 2), (5, 2), (6, 2)}

A ∩ B = {(6, 2)} P(A) 36 6 = = , 1 P(B) 6 = , 1 P(A B) 36

Events A and B will be independent if P (A ∩ B) = P (A) P (B)

1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36

 Find the probability of each event to
Two coins are tossed 500 times, and we occur.
get:
Solution: Let us say the events of getting
Two heads: 105 times two heads, one head and no head by E1,
E2 and E3, respectively.
One head: 275 times P(E1) = 105/500 = 0.21

No head: 120 times P(E2) = 275/500 = 0.55

P(E3) = 120/500 = 0.24

The Sum of probabilities of all elementary events of a random experiment is 1.

P(E1)+P(E2)+P(E3) = 0.21+0.55+0.24 = 1
 A tyre manufacturing company kept a record of the distance The frequency of a tyre required to be replaced
covered before a tyre needed to be replaced. The table shows before covering 4000 km = 20
the results of 1000 cases.
So, P(E1) = 20/1000 = 0.02

istance(in Less than 4000 to 9001 to More (ii) The frequency that tyre will last more than 9000
km) 4000 9000 14000 than km = 325 + 445 = 770
14000
So, P(E2) = 770/1000 = 0.77
Frequency 20 210 325 445

If a tyre is bought from this company, what is (iii) The frequency that tyre requires replacement
the probability that : between 4000 km and 14000 km = 210 + 325 = 535.
(i) it has to be substituted before 4000 km is
covered? So, P(E3) = 535/1000 = 0.535
(ii) it will last more than 9000 km?
(iii) it has to be replaced after 4000 km and
14000 km is covered by it?

Solution: (i) Total number of trials = 1000.

The percentage of marks obtained by a student in the monthly
tests are given below:

Test 1 2 3 4 5

Percenta 69 71 73 68 74
ge of
marks
obtained

Based on the above table, find the probability of students

getting more than 70% marks in a test.

Solution: The total number of tests conducted is 5.

The number of tests when students obtained more than 70%

marks = 3.

So, P(scoring more than 70% marks) = ⅗ = 0.6

Which number could be added to this spinner to make it more likely that the spinner will land on an odd number than
a prime number?

Currently there are two odd numbers and two prime

numbers so the chances of landing on an odd number or a
prime number are the same. By adding 3, 5 or 11 you would
be adding one prime number and one odd number so the
chances would remain equal.

By adding 9 you would be adding an odd number

but not a prime number. There would be three odd
numbers and two prime numbers so the spinner
would be more likely to land on an odd number than
a prime number.
Conrad rolls a fair dice, with sides labeled A, B, C, D, E and F. What is
the probability that the dice lands on a vowel?

A and E are vowels so there are 2 outcomes that are vowels

out of 6 outcomes altogether.

Therefore, the probability is 2/6 which

can be simplified to 1/3.
Max tested a coin to see whether it was fair. The table shows
the results of his coin toss experiment:
Heads Tails
26 41

What is the relative frequency of the coin landing on heads?

Max tossed the coin 67 times and it landed on

heads 26 times.
Relative frequency (experimental probability) =
number of
successful trials total number of trials=26/67
Grace rolled two dice. She then did something with the
two numbers shown. Here is a sample space diagram
showing all the possible outcomes:
What did Grace do with the two numbers
shown on the dice?

For each pair of numbers, Grace subtracted the

smaller number from the bigger number.

For example, if she rolled a 2 and

a 5, she did 5 − 2 = 3.
Alice has some red balls and some black balls in a bag. Altogether she has 25
balls. Alice picks one ball from the bag. The probability that Alice picks a red
ball is x and the probability that Alice picks a black ball is 4x. Work out how
many black balls are in the bag.
Since the probability of mutually exclusive events add
to 1:
x+4x=1
5x=1
x=1/5
1/5 of the balls are red and 4/5 of the balls are blue.

4/5 of 25=20
Arthur asked the students in his class whether they like math and
whether they like science. He recorded his results in the venn
diagram below.

We need to look at the numbers that are not in the ‘Like science’
circle. In this case it is 9 + 7 = 16.
A restaurant offers the following options:
Starter – soup or salad
Main – chicken, fish or vegetarian
Dessert – ice cream or cake

The number of different combinations is 2 × 3 × 2 =

12.
There are 18 girls and 12 boys in a class. 2/9 of the girls
and 1/4 of the boys walk to school. One of the students who
walks to school is chosen at random. Find the probability that
the student is a boy.
First, we need to work out how many students walk to school:

2​/9 of 18=4
1/4 of 12=3
4 +3=7

7 students walk to school. 4 are girls and 3 are boys.

So the probability the student is a boy is 3/7 .
Rachel flips a biased coin. The probability that she gets two
heads is 0.16. What is the probability that she gets two
tails?
We have been given the probability of getting two heads. We need to calculate the probability of
getting a head on each flip.

Let’s call the probability of getting a head p.

The probability p, of getting a head AND getting another head is 0.16.

Therefore, to find p: The probability of getting a head is 0.4 so the

p×p=0.16 probability of getting a tail is 0.6.
p2=0.16
p= The probability of getting two tails is 0.6
× 0.6 =