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Next draw yellow after red leads by five

Question

An urn holds 140140 balls: 2020 of each of the seven rainbow colours. Balls are drawn one at a time without replacement. You are told that among the first 7070 draws there were exactly 55 more red balls than yellow balls. What is the probability that the 7171st draw is yellow?

Short answer

528\tfrac{5}{28}. The condition only involves red versus yellow, so by symmetry each of the other five colours is still 17\tfrac17 likely on the next draw, leaving 27\tfrac27 for red plus yellow. Exactly 55 more yellows than reds remain among the 7070 balls left, so yellow exceeds red by 570\tfrac5{70}; solving gives 528\tfrac{5}{28}.

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

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