Students at Smith Middle School submitted their votes to name the school's snake mascot. The results from one of the ballot boxes are shown in the table.

Name Votes
SSSneaky 12
SSSteve 7
SSSammy 6
SSStanley 6
SSStriker 9

If two ballots are chosen randomly one at a time from the ballot box, without replacing the first one, what is the probability that both ballots are votes for SSStriker?
A. 81/1600
B. 27/520
C. 3/65
D. 9/200

Question

Students at Smith Middle School submitted their votes to name the school's snake mascot. The results from one of the ballot boxes are shown in the table.

Name	   Votes
SSSneaky	12
SSSteve	        7
SSSammy	6
SSStanley	6
SSStriker	9

If two ballots are chosen randomly one at a time from the ballot box, without replacing the first one, what is the probability that both ballots are votes for SSStriker?
 A. 81/1600
 B. 27/520
 C. 3/65
 D. 9/200

Vocaloid · Answer

there are 40 total ballots.

9 of them are for SSStriker. so the probabilty of getting the Striker on the first draw is 9/40

it says that a second one is drawn *without* replacement, so there are 8 Striker ballots left out of 39 total ballots on the second draw. so the probability of getting Striker on the second draw is 8/39.

multiply the two probabilities together to get the probability of getting two in a row w/o replacement.