SOLUTION: Sydney couldn't decide ehat kind of ribbon to buy for her hair. There was a bin in the store that had 120 ribbons in it.There were an equal number of red,blue,pink,lavender,and whi

Question 181742: Sydney couldn't decide ehat kind of ribbon to buy for her hair. There was a bin in the store that had 120 ribbons in it.There were an equal number of red,blue,pink,lavender,and white ribbons in the bin. One fifth of the ribbons were lacy; the rest were plain. If Syndey closes her eyes nd pulls out a ribbon, what are the odds it will be plain pink?
Found 2 solutions by stanbon, solver91311:
Answer by stanbon(75887) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Sydney couldn't decide ehat kind of ribbon to buy for her hair.
There was a bin in the store that had 120 ribbons in it.There were an equal number of red,blue,pink,lavender,and white ribbons in the bin.
One fifth of the ribbons were lacy; the rest were plain. If Syndey closes her eyes nd pulls out a ribbon, what are the odds it will be plain pink?
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You didn't say whether "plain" excludes lacy.
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1/5 th of theribbons are pink
Odds are (1/5)/(4/5) = 1:4
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Cheers,
Stan H.
Answer by solver91311(24713) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

There are 5 different equally distributed colors, so the odds that the ribbon will be pink are 1 in 5, or .

The problem is that the question doesn't tell how the lacy ribbons are distributed amoung the colors. They can't be equally distributed because, given 120 total ribbons and 5 different colors equally distributed, there are 24 ribbons of each color. But if of the ribbons are lacy, then 24 of the ribbons are lacy. The most equal distribution of 24 that can be made across 5 colors is 5 to each of 4 of the colors and 4 to the remaining color. There is no way to tell if the pink ribbons have 4 or 5 lacy ribbons and 20 or 19 plain ribbons.

All of that aside, there is no reason to assume that the distribution of lacy ribbons is at all even across the colors. It could well be that all of the lacy ribbons are white. They could all be pink as well. The only thing we know for certain is that there are at most 24 pink lacy ribbons and at least 0 pink lacy ribbons.

Knowing that the probability that the ribbon will be pink is and that the probability that a pink ribbon is lacy ranges from to , we can only say that the overall probability that a pink lacy ribbon will be selected is in the range:

John

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