Interactive · 5 questions
Suppose I have a bag of 3-dimensional shapes. There are cubes and prisms. The shapes are painted in the colors white and black. For every of these shapes, there will be white and black.
If I pick a random shape with my eyes closed and not knowing anything about them, what is the probability that I choose a prism?
Okay. Now, what's the probability that I get a white shape (cube or prism)?
Let's talk about the probability that I pick a shape that's both a prism and it's painted white. This scenario is called compound probability, when there are two events which both have to be true. Right now, we have the two separate probabilities: the (I get a prism) = and the (it's white) = .
We will have to perform an operation on these two probabilities. Which operation do you think we should use?
Multiplying the two probabilities would be the best idea. I'll show you why. Pretend there's a family of kangaroos. Half of them are gray, and the other half are red. Now we can obviously see that the probability of a gray kangaroo is half. But that's not all. Out of the gray kangaroos, half are adults and half are babies. Same for the red ones. Do you agree that half of the kangaroos are adults? Well, half it is. Now if we are asking what fraction of all these kangaroos are red babies, half of them are red, and half of those red ones are babies, so we multiply these two fractions, obtaining one - fourth.
Do you understand this kangaroo example?
Let's move on. Since you now understand the method of multiplying from the kangaroo example, let's apply that method to the shape scenario. What do you get now?
Well, if you've multiplied the correct fractions without a mistake, you would have gotten the answer . Great job!





