Question 1 of 5
A game uses a bag containing 4 red tiles, 3 blue tiles, and 2 green tiles. Two tiles are drawn at random without replacement. The probability that the two tiles are different colors can be written in the form , where is a constant. What is the value of ?
Explanation
The expression represents the probability that both drawn tiles are the same color, because:
- counts ways to draw 2 red tiles,
- counts ways to draw 2 blue tiles,
- counts ways to draw 2 green tiles,
- and counts all possible ways to draw 2 tiles from 9.
The event "two tiles are different colors" is the complement of "two tiles are the same color." Therefore,
Comparing this with
shows that .
So the correct answer is .
Concept summary
For two complementary events, the probability of one event equals 1 minus the probability of the other. Combination expressions often represent probabilities by counting favorable outcomes over total outcomes.