There are 8 cubes in a box: 5 yellow cubes, 2 orange cubes, and 1 purple cube. If a cube is picked from the box at random, what is the sample space for this experiment?

Question

calculusxy · Answer

@perl @Zarkon @SolomonZelman

zarkon · Answer

what do you think it is?

calculusxy · Answer

8

calculusxy · Answer

{yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, orange, orange, purple}

calculusxy · Answer

@Zarkon

zarkon · Answer

neither of those are correct...though the 2nd one is closer to the real answer

calculusxy · Answer

So what's the flaw?

zarkon · Answer

if you pull one cube what could you get?

calculusxy · Answer

Yellow or orange or purple, though yellow would be the most probable one.

zarkon · Answer

probability doesn't matter...just what you can get

calculusxy · Answer

Yellow, orange, or purple

zarkon · Answer

that is it...though put it in set notation

calculusxy · Answer

{yellow, orange, purple}

zarkon · Answer

that is correct

zarkon · Answer

the sample space is just the list of all possible outcomes from your probability experiment

calculusxy · Answer

Wait, but I want you to look at this problem and its answer:

zarkon · Answer

that is not the sample space

zarkon · Answer

their answer is not correct

perl · Answer

if you label the yellow marbles as Y1, Y2, Y3

perl · Answer

then you have 
{ R, B , Y1, Y2, Y3 }

perl · Answer

maybe thats what they meant , i'm not sure

zarkon · Answer

only if they are distinguishable

zarkon · Answer

and they would need to say that in the problem