Hi guys. If anyone can help me with this, that would be awesome! If I have a deck (52 cards) and I'm picking 5 cards out, what is the chance that I pick at most one queen/how would i do that? thanks!

Question

anonymous · Answer

hmm, i think theres 4 queens in a deck (hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds) so right away thats a 4/52 probability of drawing a queen. now if your only picking 5 cards, then  think you would have 4/52 chanes 5 times
so i think it would be like (4/52+4/52+4/52+4/52+4/52)

anonymous · Answer

interesting. but the problem is "at most" one queen....meaning i want to pick five cards and either none of them are queens or only one is a queen...

whpalmer4 · Answer

@alexrod411 the probability changes slightly after you pick a card without replacement, as the problem seems to imply.  For the first card drawn, the probability of drawing a queen is indeed 4/52, but if you don't draw one, the probability of drawing one on the next draw is 4/51.  If you did draw one on the first card, the probability of drawing one on the next draw is 3/51.

anonymous · Answer

ohh good point. so then it would probably be something like (4/52+4/51...etc) right?

whpalmer4 · Answer

at this hour of the night, I'm better at spotting mistakes than suggesting correct approaches :-)

anonymous · Answer

Because of the "at most" should it be: 4/52 + 48/51 + 47/50 + 46/49 + 45/48 ?