Next draw yellow after red leads by five
Question
An urn holds balls: of each of the seven rainbow colours. Balls are drawn one at a time without replacement. You are told that among the first draws there were exactly more red balls than yellow balls. What is the probability that the st draw is yellow?
Short answer
. The condition only involves red versus yellow, so by symmetry each of the other five colours is still likely on the next draw, leaving for red plus yellow. Exactly more yellows than reds remain among the balls left, so yellow exceeds red by ; solving gives .
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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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