First matching sock pair arriving on day three
Question
A drawer holds socks forming pairs, each pair a distinct colour. On Monday two socks are taken at random from the drawer; on Tuesday two more are taken at random from the left; on Wednesday two more are taken from the remaining . What is the probability that Monday's and Tuesday's socks are both mismatched but Wednesday's two socks match?
Short answer
. By symmetry of the order in which the three pairs are drawn, this equals the probability that Monday matches and Tuesday and Wednesday don't: .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
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