Question

A bag of tokens contains 55 red, 88 green, and 44 blue tokens. What is the probability that a randomly selected token is red or green? Enter your answer as a fraction.

Answer 1

Solution

Given

Red = 5

Green = 8

Blue = 4

Total = 5 +8 + 4 = 17

Probability of either red or green = prob. of red + prob of green

The use of 'OR' in probabilities simply means addition of the probabilities

P( red ) = number of red tokens / Total number of tokens

P(red) = 5 /17

P(green) = 8/17

P(red or green ) is obtained as shown below

$\frac{5}{17}+\frac{8}{17}=\frac{13}{17}$

The final answer is

$\frac{13}{17}$