Original practice · fully worked
Original variant: sample containing exactly two represented categories
A cabinet contains three red cartridges, four blue cartridges, and five green cartridges. Four cartridges are sampled without replacement. What proportion of such samples contain cartridges in just two colors?
- A
0.0121 - B
0.4424 - C
0.4667 - D
0.5455 - E
0.9879
Answer and calculation
Count four-subsets within each color pair and remove monochromatic subsets. The three pair contributions are 34, 65, and 120, so 219 of 495 samples contain exactly two colors, giving 0.4424, choice B.
Setup
Setup
Count all four-cartridge subsets.
#{all samples}=(412)=495 Model
Model
For each pair of colors, count subsets drawn from that pair and exclude one-color subsets.
NRB=(47)−(44)=34 NRG=(48)−(45)=65 NBG=(49)−(44)−(45)=120 Compute
Compute
Add the disjoint exact-two-color counts and divide by all samples.
Nexactly two=34+65+120=219 Pr(exactly two colors)=495219=16573=0.4424242 Answer
Answer
Exactly two colors are represented with probability about 0.4424.
0.4424(B)