Question

If we toss 3 coins, what is the probability that exactly 1 tail will appear?
Answer

3/8

1/2

3/4

1/8

Answer 1

Any ideas?

Answer 2

tbh nope

Answer 3

Well what if you only had 1 coin, what's the probability exactly 1 tail will occur?

Answer 4

1/2?

Answer 5

Yeah good. So now draw out all the possibilities you can have of getting heads and tails when you have 3 coins, for example if you only have 2 coins you can get:

HH
HT
TH
TT

So to get the probability of something just add up all the cases of that happening and divide by the total number of cases. So here HT and TH are exactly 1 tail. In all there are 4 cases, so we have 2/4 which simplifies to 1/2.

Now try the same with 3 coins.

Answer 6

the final answer would be 3/8

Answer 7

Yeah perfect. =)

Answer 8

Thnx