From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Probability word problem example

Probability word problem example

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Probability word problem example

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- [Instructor] Okay, so in this word problem, we'll deal with what I think is a slightly confusing scenario, in which we're asked to calculate the odds of choosing two things at the same time. So let's read this. Imagine a giant hat containing 100 slips of paper. On one of the slips is your name; on another is my name. What are the chances of somebody randomly picking two slips of paper from the hat and picking both of our names? So it's actually really easy to handle. Instead of picking two things at once, we're going to imagine two separate picks. Pick number one and pick number two. So what are the chances that the first pick is one of our two names? Well there's two of what we want, and there's 100 possibilities. Then we have to think about what has changed for the second pick, assuming the first pick was successful. Well now there's only one of what we want. And there's 99 possibilities. So really helpful to kind of think of this one pick at a time. The first pick, there's two…

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