Question

A bag contains 6 red marbles, 3 blue marbles and 8 green marbles. If three marbles are drawn out of the bag, what is the probability, to the nearest 10th of a percent, that all three marbles drawn will be green?

Answer 1

This is a 4 step problem.

Find the probability of drawing a green marble the first time

8 green marbles ÷ 17 total marbles

Next, we find the probability of drawing a green marble the second time

7 green marbles ÷ 16 total marbles

Find the probability of drawing a green marble the third time

6 green marbles ÷ 15 total marbles

We take away one from the total marbles and green marbles each time because we are finding the probability that we draw a green marble all three times

Last step:

Multiply all the probabilities

$\frac{8}{17}$ × $\frac{7}{16}$ × $\frac{6}{15}$

The final answer is 7/85 or an 8% chance

If you were curious, the decimal version of this answer is 0.08235294