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What is the probability that at least one of the junior partners is on the committee? - Yahoo! Answers
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What is the probability that at least one of the junior partners is on the committee?
A law firm has eight senior and eleven junior partners. A committee of 5 partners is selected at random to represent the firm at a conference. What is the probability that at least one of the junior partners is on the committee?

A bag contains eighteen tomatoes, of which one is rotten. A sample of three tomatoes is selected at random. What is the probability that the sample contains the rotten tomato? HELP PLEASE!
2 years ago ( 2011-03-13 21:13:53 +0000 ) (Tiebreaker) Report Abuse

Elizabeth P

Answers (2)
Answerer 1 For the first answer: P(at least one junior partner is member)=1-P(no junior partners are member) =1-P(all members are senior) =1-P(first member is senior AND second is senior AND ... fifth is senior) =1-P(first is senior)*P(second is senior | first is senior)*...*P(fifth is senior | first four are senior) =1-8/(8+11)-7/(7+11)-6/(6+11)-5/(5+11)

Source(s):
http://www.statlect.com/cndprb1.htm
2 years ago ( 2011-03-13 21:32:20 +0000 ) Report Abuse

Answerer 2 Problem 1: probability of all partners being senior is (8 choose 5)/(19 choose 5) so the probability of at least one junior partner is 1- (8 choose 5)/(19 choose 5) = .9951 which is actually really high. Meaning, if you pick 5 people, the chances that you will get at least one junior partner is almost guaranteed alternatively, you could calculate the probability of picking 5 seniors in a row: (8/19)(7/18)(6/17)(5/16)(4/15) and taking 1 minus that to get the same answer = .9951 problem 2: we want the probability of picking three tomatoes and getting one rotten tomato. how many different samples of three tomatoes can you make that include the rotten one? if we pick the rotten tomato, there are 2 more we have to pick, and those 2 could be any combination of the remaining 17. so there are (17 choose 2) combinations of 1 rotten and 2 good. there are 18 choose 3 combinations in all so the probability is (17 choose 2)/(18 choose 3) = 1/6 hope this helps! any questions, just let me know
2 years ago ( 2011-03-15 04:25:45 +0000 ) Report Abuse

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