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Colour of the first ball given a blue second

Question

An urn holds 1010 balls: 33 are green and 77 are blue. Two balls are taken out one after the other, without putting the first back. You are told only that the second ball drawn is blue. Given this, what is the probability that the first ball drawn was green?

Short answer

1/31/3. Draws without replacement are exchangeable, so conditioning on the second ball being blue is the same as conditioning on the first being blue. That leaves 33 green among 99 balls, giving 39=13\tfrac39=\tfrac13.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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