Find the Probability of Specified Selections

Did you know that probability can be written as a fraction? 

The top number (numerator) will be what we are looking for, and the bottom number (denominator) will be the total amount. 

 

Let's look at an example together.

 

Who doesn't like sweets?

 

 

 

Example

In a pile of sweets there are 10 red sweets, 7 blue sweets, 8 yellow sweets, 3 purple sweets, 5 orange sweets and 2 green sweets. 

Find the probability of picking a yellow sweet.

Here, we can see there are 8 yellow sweets out of a total 35 sweets, so we can write this as the following fraction:

    

 

This fraction cannot be simplified, so we can leave it as it is.

 

Let's try something else. How about if we were to try and find the probability of picking a red or an orange sweet. So now we have two possibilities we're looking for...Trickier, but you've got this!

 

We can see that there are 10 red sweets and 5 orange sweets, and of course we still have 35 sweets in total, so we can write this as the following fraction:   

 

 

As you can see, this fraction can be simplified by dividing both the top and bottom by 5.

 

Throughout these questions, we need to simplify our answers wherever possible.

 

Let's give them a go!