Basic Probability

Janet rolls a standard $6$ -sided die $4$ times and keeps a running total of the numbers she rolls. What is the probability that at some point, her running total will equal $3?$

A pair of fair $6$ -sided dice is rolled $n$ times. What is the least value of $n$ such that the probability that the sum of the numbers face up on a roll equals $7$ at least once is greater than $\frac{1}{2}$ ?

When a certain unfair die is rolled, an even number is $3$ times as likely to appear as an odd number. The die is rolled twice. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers rolled is even?

A box contains $5$ chips, numbered $1, 2, 3, 4,$ and $5$ . Chips are drawn randomly one at a time without replacement until the sum of the values drawn exceeds $4$ . What is the probability that $3$ draws are required?

The faces of each of $7$ standard dice are labeled with the integers from $1$ to $6$ . Let $p$ be the probability that when all $7$ dice are rolled, the sum of the numbers on the top faces is $10$ . What other sum occurs with the same probability $p$ ?

A radio program has a quiz consisting of $3$ multiple-choice questions, each with $3$ choices. A contestant wins if he or she gets $2$ or more of the questions right. The contestant answers randomly to each question. What is the probability of winning?

Two different numbers are selected at random from $( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)$ and multiplied together. What is the probability that the product is even?

Three distinct integers are selected at random between $1$ and $2016$ , inclusive. Which of the following is a correct statement about the probability $p$ that the product of the three integers is odd?

Let $S$ be the set of sides and diagonals of a regular pentagon. A pair of elements of $S$ are selected at random without replacement. What is the probability that the two chosen segments have the same length?

A pair of six-sided dice are labeled so that one die has only even numbers (two each of $2$ , $4$ , and $6$ ), and the other die has only odd numbers (two each of $1$ , $3$ , and $5$ ). The pair of dice is rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers on the tops of the two dice is $7$ ?

A pair of standard 6-sided fair dice is rolled once. The sum of the numbers rolled determines the diameter of a circle. What is the probability that the numerical value of the area of the circle is less than the numerical value of the circle's circumference?

Twelve fair dice are rolled. What is the probability that the product of the numbers on the top faces is prime?

An envelope contains eight bills: $2$ ones, $2$ fives, $2$ tens, and $2$ twenties. Two bills are drawn at random without replacement. What is the probability that their sum is $$20$ or more?

Three tiles are marked $X$ and two other tiles are marked $O$ . The five tiles are randomly arranged in a row. What is the probability that the arrangement reads $XOXOX$ ?

One fair die has faces $1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3$ and another has faces $4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6.$ The dice are rolled and the numbers on the top faces are added. What is the probability that the sum will be odd?

A set of three points is randomly chosen from the grid shown. Each three point set has the same probability of being chosen. What is the probability that the points lie on the same straight line?

Coin $A$ is flipped three times and coin $B$ is flipped four times. What is the probability that the number of heads obtained from flipping the two fair coins is the same?

Six chairs are arranged around a round table. Two students and two teachers randomly select four of the chairs to sit in. What is the probability that the two students will sit in two adjacent chairs and the two teachers will also sit in two adjacent chairs?

On Monday, $6$ students went to the tutoring center at the same time, and each one was randomly assigned to one of the $6$ tutors on duty. On Tuesday, the same $6$ students showed up, the same $6$ tutors were on duty, and the students were again randomly assigned to the tutors. What is the probability that exactly $2$ …

Nine athletes, no two of whom are the same height, try out for the basketball team. One at a time, they draw a wristband at random, without replacement, from a bag containing $3$ blue bands, $3$ red bands, and $3$ green bands. They are divided into a blue group, a red group, and a green group. The tallest member of …

Two teams are in a best-two-out-of-three playoff: the teams will play at most $3$ games, and the winner of the playoff is the first team to win $2$ games. The first game is played on Team A's home field, and the remaining games are played on Team B's home field. Team A has a $\frac{2}{3}$ chance of winning at home, and …

A fair $6$ -sided die is repeatedly rolled until an odd number appears. What is the probability that every even number appears at least once before the first occurrence of an odd number?

Una rolls $6$ standard $6$ -sided dice simultaneously and calculates the product of the $6{ }$ numbers obtained. What is the probability that the product is divisible by $4?$

Each of $6$ balls is randomly and independently painted either black or white with equal probability. What is the probability that every ball is different in color from more than half of the other $5$ balls?

Ms. Carr asks her students to read any $5$ of the $10$ books on a reading list. Harold randomly selects $5$ books from this list, and Betty does the same. What is the probability that there are exactly $2$ books that they both select?

A red ball and a green ball are randomly and independently tossed into bins numbered with positive integers so that for each ball, the probability that it is tossed into bin $k$ is $2^{-k}$ for $k=1,2,3,\ldots.$ What is the probability that the red ball is tossed into a higher-numbered bin than the green ball?

Al, Bill, and Cal will each randomly be assigned a whole number from $1$ to $10$ , inclusive, with no two of them getting the same number. What is the probability that Al's number will be a whole number multiple of Bill's and Bill's number will be a whole number multiple of Cal's?

Three fair six-sided dice are rolled. What is the probability that the values shown on two of the dice sum to the value shown on the remaining die?

Four fair six-sided dice are rolled. What is the probability that at least three of the four dice show the same value?

The faces of a cubical die are marked with the numbers $1$ , $2$ , $2$ , $3$ , $3$ , and $4$ . The faces of another die are marked with the numbers $1$ , $3$ , $4$ , $5$ , $6$ , and $8$ . Both dice are thrown. What is the probability that the sum of the top two numbers will be $5$ , $7$ , or $9$ ?

Two fair coins are to be tossed once. For each head that results, one fair die is to be rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the die rolls is odd? (Note that if no die is rolled, the sum is $0$ .)

A poll shows that $70\%$ of all voters approve of the mayor's work. On three separate occasions a pollster selects a voter at random. What is the probability that on exactly one of these three occasions the voter approves of the mayor's work?

The wheel shown is spun twice, and the randomly determined numbers opposite the pointer are recorded. The first number is divided by $4,$ and the second number is divided by $5.$ The first remainder designates a column, and the second remainder designates a row on the checkerboard shown. What is the probability that …

Integers $a, b, c,$ and $d$ , not necessarily distinct, are chosen independently and at random from 0 to 2007, inclusive. What is the probability that $ad-bc$ is even?

For a particular peculiar pair of dice, the probabilities of rolling $1$ , $2$ , $3$ , $4$ , $5$ , and $6$ , on each die are in the ratio $1:2:3:4:5:6$ . What is the probability of rolling a total of $7$ on the two dice?

Bob and Alice each have a bag that contains one ball of each of the colors blue, green, orange, red, and violet. Alice randomly selects one ball from her bag and puts it into Bob's bag. Bob then randomly selects one ball from his bag and puts it into Alice's bag. What is the probability that after this process the …

Two eight-sided dice each have faces numbered $1$ through $8$ . When the dice are rolled, each face has an equal probability of appearing on the top. What is the probability that the product of the two top numbers is greater than their sum?

A frog hops along the number line according to the following rules. $\qquad\bullet$ It starts at $0$ . $\qquad\bullet$ If it is at $0$ , then it moves to $1$ with probability $\tfrac{1}{2}$ and it disappears with probability $\tfrac{1}{2}$ . $\qquad\bullet$ For $n = 1, 2,$ or $3,$ if it is at $n,$ then it moves to …

A bee is moving in three-dimensional space. A fair six-sided die with faces labeled $A^+, A^-, B^+, B^-, C^+,$ and $C^-$ is rolled. Suppose the bee occupies the point $(a,b,c).$ If the die shows $A^+$ , then the bee moves to the point $(a+1,b,c)$ and if the die shows $A^-,$ then the bee moves to the point $(a-1,b,c).$ …

If $A$ and $B$ are vertices of a polyhedron, define the distance $d(A, B)$ to be the minimum number of edges of the polyhedron one must traverse in order to connect $A$ and $B$ . For example, $\overline{AB}$ is an edge of the polyhedron, then $d(A, B) = 1$ , but if $\overline{AC}$ and $\overline{CB}$ are edges and …

Each of the $5{ }$ sides and the $5{ }$ diagonals of a regular pentagon are randomly and independently colored red or blue with equal probability. What is the probability that there will be a triangle whose vertices are among the vertices of the pentagon such that all of its sides have the same color?

The numbers $1,2,\dots,9$ are randomly placed into the $9$ squares of a $3 \times 3$ grid. Each square gets one number, and each of the numbers is used once. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers in each row and each column is odd?

Let $N$ be a positive multiple of $5$ . One red ball and $N$ green balls are arranged in a line in random order. Let $P(N)$ be the probability that at least $\tfrac{3}{5}$ of the green balls are on the same side of the red ball. Observe that $P(5)=1$ and that $P(N)$ approaches $\tfrac{4}{5}$ as $N$ grows large. What is …

A $3 \times 3$ square is partitioned into $9$ unit squares. Each unit square is painted either white or black with each color being equally likely, chosen independently and at random. The square is then rotated $90\,^{\circ}$ clockwise about its center, and every white square in a position formerly occupied by a black …

Bernardo randomly picks 3 distinct numbers from the set $\{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9\}$ and arranges them in descending order to form a 3-digit number. Silvia randomly picks 3 distinct numbers from the set $\{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8\}$ and also arranges them in descending order to form a 3-digit number. What is the probability that …

Two cubical dice each have removable numbers $1$ through $6$ . The twelve numbers on the two dice are removed, put into a bag, then drawn one at a time and randomly reattached to the faces of the cubes, one number to each face. The dice are then rolled and the numbers on the two top faces are added. What is the …

Three distinct vertices of a cube are chosen at random. What is the probability that the plane determined by these three vertices contains points inside the cube?

Each face of a cube is given a single narrow stripe painted from the center of one edge to the center of the opposite edge. The choice of the edge pairing is made at random and independently for each face. What is the probability that there is a continuous stripe encircling the cube?

Jacob uses the following procedure to write down a sequence of numbers. First he chooses the first term to be 6. To generate each succeeding term, he flips a fair coin. If it comes up heads, he doubles the previous term and subtracts 1. If it comes up tails, he takes half of the previous term and subtracts 1. What is …

Three red beads, two white beads, and one blue bead are placed in line in random order. What is the probability that no two neighboring beads are the same color?

Forty slips are placed into a hat, each bearing a number $1$ , $2$ , $3$ , $4$ , $5$ , $6$ , $7$ , $8$ , $9$ , or $10$ , with each number entered on four slips. Four slips are drawn from the hat at random and without replacement. Let $p$ be the probability that all four slips bear the same number. Let $q$ be the …

Each face of a cube is painted either red or blue, each with probability 1/2. The color of each face is determined independently. What is the probability that the painted cube can be placed on a horizontal surface so that the four vertical faces are all the same color?

Tina randomly selects two distinct numbers from the set $\{ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 \}$ , and Sergio randomly selects a number from the set $\{ 1, 2, ..., 10 \}$ . What is the probability that Sergio's number is larger than the sum of the two numbers chosen by Tina?

A box contains exactly five chips, three red and two white. Chips are randomly removed one at a time without replacement until all the red chips are drawn or all the white chips are drawn. What is the probability that the last chip drawn is white?

Jason rolls three fair standard six-sided dice. Then he looks at the rolls and chooses a subset of the dice (possibly empty, possibly all three dice) to reroll. After rerolling, he wins if and only if the sum of the numbers face up on the three dice is exactly $7.$ Jason always plays to optimize his chances of winning. …

A bug starts at one vertex of a cube and moves along the edges of the cube according to the following rule. At each vertex the bug will choose to travel along one of the three edges emanating from that vertex. Each edge has equal probability of being chosen, and all choices are independent. What is the probability that …