Question

Biologists breed a pair of plants where each plant has the color genes Gg. This means that any offspring these plants produce has a 25 percent chance of inheriting the color genes gg, which makes the offspring an albino plant. Assume that offspring inherit genes independently from each other.What would find the probability of this pair producing exactly 1 albino plant among 6 offspring?

Answer 1

Answer:

.356

Explanation:

p = .25, the chance of getting an albino

q = .75, the chance of getting not an albino

n = 6, the number of offspring

r = 1, the number of albinos we want

What's the probability of getting exactly 1 out of six? This is called a binomial distribution. The formula is

$p(X=r) = (nCr) p^{r} q^{n-r}$

nCr means n choose r, which you can find on your calculator (on a TI-84, it's MATH->PRB->nCr).

$p(X=1) = (6C1) .25^{1} .75^{5}$

$p(X=1) = 6* .25 * .237$

$p(X=1) = .356$

That's a fairly low percentage, which makes sense, because you'd expect 1.5 albinos, if this were a statistically perfect world.