- You are given a ten piece box of chocolate truffles. You know based on the label that six of the pieces have an orange cream filling and four of the pieces have a coconut filling. If you were to eat four pieces in a row, what is the probability that the first two pieces you eat have an orange cream filling and the last two have a coconut filling?
(given, O = orange, C = coconut) :
P(OOCC)
= P(1st is orange) * P(2nd is orange) * P(3rd is coconut) * P (4th is coconut)
= 6/10 * 5/9 * 4/8 * 3/7
= .6 * .556 * .5 * .429
= .0716
Follow-up question: If you were given an identical box of chocolates and again eat four pieces in a row, what is the probability that exactly two contain coconut filling?
- Step 1 involves a combinatorics problem of 4 choose 2 to determine how many combinations of oranges and coconuts we can obtain given 4 pulls from the box :
= 4C2
= 4!/ (2! * (4-2)!)
= 24 / (2 * 2)
= 6
This is equivalent to the following six combinations:
CCOO, COCO, COOC, OCCO, OCOC, OOCC
- Step 2. In the first question above, we learned that the probability of pulling exactly 2 coconuts in 4 pulls from the box is the same at pulling exactly 2 oranges as well and we can see that the probability is the same for all 6 combinations of Os and Cs.
Therefore, the probability of pulling exactly 2 coconuts
= 4C2 [see step 1 above] * .0716
= 6 * .0716
= .4296