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Purple cherries left when the last red is eaten

Question

A bowl holds 88 purple and 55 red cherries. Emilia removes them one at a time in random order until the bowl is empty. What is the probability that exactly 22 purple cherries remain in the bowl at the moment she takes out the final red cherry?

Short answer

70429\tfrac{70}{429}. This happens exactly when the last three cherries in the random order are red, purple, purple. Reading the order backwards, that has probability 813⋅712⋅511=70429\tfrac{8}{13}\cdot\tfrac{7}{12}\cdot\tfrac{5}{11}=\tfrac{70}{429}.

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

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