Okay - this isn't homework. I took statistics and let's just say although it wasn't pretty, I passed. My boss asked me to solve this probability question back when I was taking stats and I could never figure it out. He wants to know the probability for a bowling raffle he is in every year.

There are 3 fishbowls.

Inside each fishbowl there are 10 marbles.
3 marbles are black
7 marbles are white

What is the probability that if you pull 4 marbles from each jar that you will get 9 black marbles?

I told him about this site and that he might finally get an answer to this question that has been bugging him for a while. I hope someone knows!

ebaines

To get 9 black marbles, you must pull 3 blacks plus 1 white from each bowl. No other combination of choices will work. So, if we can find the probability of pulling 3 blacks and 1 white from a bowl, we cube that to get the probablility of doing it 3 times in a row.

The math is like this:

P(3 blacks + 1 white) = (3*2*1*7)/(10*9*8*7) * 4 = 0.0333

Note - the factor 4 is there because the white marble can show up in any one of the 4 picks.

So the probability of doing this feat 3 times in a row is 0.0333 ^ 3 = 0.000037037, or 1 out of 27,000.

BRD4life

the one thing he failed to notice is the chance you could get 4 black marbles thus manking the proabailty slightly higher making it 0.001332

Emland

I don't understand BRD4life. There are only 3 black marbles per jar. How would you get 4 black marbles in one draw?