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White and green left after the last black marble

Question

An urn holds 200200 black, 400400 white and 600600 green marbles, which are removed one at a time at random without replacement. What is the probability that, at the moment the final black marble is removed, the urn still contains at least one white marble and at least one green marble?

Short answer

7/127/12. The very last marble must be white (1/31/3) or green (1/21/2). If it is green, we also need the last of the black-or-white marbles to be white (2/32/3); if it is white, the last black-or-green must be green (3/43/4). So 12⋅23+13⋅34=712\tfrac12\cdot\tfrac23+\tfrac13\cdot\tfrac34=\tfrac{7}{12}.

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

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