Red candies running out before blue and green
Question
A jar contains red, blue and green candies, which are taken out one by one in uniformly random order. What is the probability that when the final red candy is removed, the jar still holds at least one blue and at least one green candy?
Short answer
. We need red to be the first colour to run out. Case 1: the last candy is green () and, among red and blue, the last is blue (). Case 2: the last candy is blue () and, among red and green, the last is green (). Total .
Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Candies in a jar', p.78; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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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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