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? asked in Science & MathematicsMathematics · 7 months ago

stats help ?

could not figure out this question for stats, pls help

Suppose that the New England Colonials baseball team is equally likely to win a game as not to win it. If 5 Colonials games are chosen at random, what is the probability that exactly 3 of those games are won by the Colonials?

2 Answers

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  • Dixon
    Lv 7
    7 months ago

    Yes, it is a binomial distribution of 5 trials where p = 0.5 and we want to know the probability of 3 successes (ie r = 3), which we can write as p(3). So you could look that up in a table, or do it from first principles as below, which may be actually easier.

      

    Since the probability of winning is the same as the probability of losing, then any ordered sequence of 5 outcomes is equally likely. Thus there are 2^5 = 32 possible ordered outcomes, all equally likely. And there are 5C3 ways to have a 3 wins in 5 games.

    Thus,

    p(3) = 5C3 / 32

    p(3) = (5 x 4 x 3) / (3! x 32)

    p(3) = 0.3125

  • Bryce
    Lv 7
    7 months ago

    0.3125

    I used the binomial probability distribution function.

    P(X=3)= 5C3 * 0.5^3 * 0.5^2= 0.3125

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