Question

A bag contains 20 counters. 8 of the counters are yellow. A counter is picked at random. What is the probability that it is yellow? Give your answer as a fraction in its simplest form

Answer 1

You would simply do 8 over 20 or 8/20. Think of the fraction symbol as the phrase "out of". 8 out of 20 counters are yellow. To simplify, you find a number you can divide both 8 and 2 by. You can either divide it by the 1st number you know you can (such as 2, but then you may have to divide it multiple times to get it to the simplest form) or find the highest factor to divide by (such as 4). 8 divided by 4 is 2 and 20 divided by 4 is 5. So your answer in simplest form is 2/5.

Answer 2

So there are 8 counters out of 20 which are yellow. so that is 8/20 which is simplified to 2/5
so the answer is 2/5