Question

The table shows the number of skirts of different colors in a closet. A fair coin is shown below the table.

A coin

yellow 5
left 8
green 4
pink 3

Maria selects a skirt from the closet randomly without looking and then tosses the fair coin. What is the probability that she will select a yellow skirt and that the coin will land tails up?


a 1 over 20
b 1 over 10
c 1 over 8
d 1 over 5

Answer 1

You have two events happening which are independent of each other. The first is the color of the skirt and the second is the coin.

To find the probability of picking the yellow skirt you take the number of yellow skirts and divide by the total number of skirts. so the probability of a yellow is 5/20

The second event is the coin. The probability of flipping tails is 1/2.

To find the total probability of two independent events, you multiply the individual probabilities