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Finding Binomial Probabilities Using Formulas: Process & Examples

Finding binomial probabilities requires finding the number of successes, the number of trials, and the probability
of success on an individual trial. Learn more about the process of identifying and finding binomial probabilities
and their formula.

Binomial Probabilities
Dakota is working on a research project with his friends for a government class. He and his friends
have to call ten people in their town and ask if they voted in the past election. Dakota found
previous research that says the likelihood of someone voting in an election in his town is 20%.
What is the probability that Dakota and his friends will find five people that voted?

To solve this problem, you need to understand binomial experiments and probabilities. In this
lesson, you will learn how to identify binomial probabilities and solve problems using the binomial
formula.

Identifying Binomial Probabilities

First, let's discuss how you can identify a binomial experiment. A binomial experiment is an
experiment that contains a fixed number of trials that results in only one of two outcomes: success
or failure. For example, a person flipping a coin ten times to see how many heads appear in the
coin flips would be a binomial experiment. There are some things to keep in mind when learning
about binomial experiments:

First, the outcomes must be independent. This means that the outcome of one trial cannot have any
influence on another. We can assume that as Dakota and his friends are making calls, the first person they
call will not have any influence on the second person they call, and so forth.

Second, a binomial experiment must only have two possible outcomes. In this case, the two possible
outcomes are either the person voted or they didn't.

Third, there are a fixed number of trials in a binomial experiment. In Dakota's experiment, there are ten
people he will call - this is a fixed number that he and his friends have determined before the experiment
begins.
Now that you understand binomial experiments, let's practice finding binomial probabilities using
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Finding a Binomial Probability

The binomial probability formula

This is the binomial formula. Before we get into how to use this formula, let's review the
information that we've gathered so far. We know that Dakota and his friends are calling ten people.
We know that there is a 20% chance that the people they call will have voted in the last election. We
also know that Dakota and his friends want to know the probability of five people out of the ten
having voted in the last election. So, what can we do with these numbers?

First, we need to find the values of x, n, and P. The x represents the number of successes, the n
represents the number of trials, and the P represents the probability of success on an individual
trial. In our case, x represents the number of people who voted in the last election.

Dakota and his friends want to know if 5 people voted in the last election, therefore x = 5. The n
represents the number of people Dakota and his friends will call, therefore n = 10. The P represents
the probability of an individual trial, and each person is 20% likely to say yes, therefore P = .20.
When we plug our numbers into the formula, it should look like this. I've color coded the numbers
so you can see where each belongs in the binomial probability formula.
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Now, you may be wondering, 'What does the C stand for?' The C stands for combination. This
means that that we are looking at the probability of a combination of 5 people saying they have
voted in the last election. It doesn't matter if it is the first 5 people, the last 5 people, or a
combination in between. In this case, order does not matter. In order to solve this equation, we will
first need to find the value of C. The combination formula looks like this.

The combination formula

You may notice that this formula uses an exclamation point, also known as a factorial in
mathematics. Probability and statistics problems don't often use factorials, except when it comes
to combinations. You will need to use a graphing calculator, or try a search on the Internet for 10!
to find the factorial values. For more information about factorials, check out our other lessons.

The combination for this probability is 252. This means that there are 252 different combinations
for this problem. Let's insert our combination into our formula and solve our binomial probability.
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Alright, here is the work for our binomial probability formula. On the third row, you'll notice I
plugged in our combination value, and I subtracted 5 from 10 in the last exponent. In this next row,
I subtract .20 from 1. This part of the formula actually makes a lot of sense. If you think about it
logically, there is a 20% chance that a person will say yes to Dakota's question.

That's the probability of success, but what about the probability of failure? That's something else
that must be taken into consideration. If there is a 20% chance of success, then there must also be
an 80% chance of failure. If you add the two together, you get 100%!

Okay, so now let's look at the next row. Here, I've solved .20 to the 5th power, which is 0.00032. In
the next row, I do the same thing for the probability of failure, which is 0.32768. Now I just need to
multiply from left to right. First, when I multiply 252 by 0.00032 I get 0.08064, and when I multiply
that by 0.32768 I get 0.0264241152, rounded to 3%, which leads us to our answer: there is a 3%
chance that 5 people out of 10 will have voted in last year's election.

Lesson Summary
Remember that a binomial experiment is an experiment that contains a fixed number of trials
that results in only one of two outcomes: success or failure. We can use this information to find the
probability of certain numbers of success. We can do this by using the binomial probability
formula, which looks like this.
 The binomial probability formula
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You will also need to find the combination using the combination formula, which looks like this.

The combination formula

Remember, if you have any trouble solving these formulas, break it down and pay close attention
to the order of operations. Check out our other lessons for practice problems on this formula!

Learning Outcomes
View the video lesson, then ensure your ability to:

List the properties of a binomial experiment

State the variables needed to calculate binomial probability

Write the binomial probability formula and the combination formula

Calculate a binomial probability

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