document.write( "Question 1190403: Six women and five men walk into an appliance store at the same time. There are five salesperson available to help them. Find the probability that the salesperson will first hepl at least two women \n" ); document.write( "
Algebra.Com's Answer #822134 by greenestamps(13200)\"\" \"About 
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\n" ); document.write( "In an obscure way, the problem is asking what the probability is that, of the first 5 customers helped, either 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 are women.

\n" ); document.write( "The customers are 6 women and 5 men, so the probability that any one woman is helped is 6/11 and the probability that any one man is helped is 5/11.

\n" ); document.write( "We could find the answer by computing the probabilities of having only 0 or 1 women among the first 5 helped and subtract that from 1.

\n" ); document.write( "Or we could find the answer by computing the probabilities that 2 to 5 women are among the first 5 helped and add those.

\n" ); document.write( "But for learning purposes, I would suggest that it is useful to compute the probabilities for ALL the cases. That is only a bit more work than is required; it gives the student practice in computing such probabilities; and it gives the student a check on his computations by verifying that the sum of the probabilities for all the cases is 1.

\n" ); document.write( "So let's do that. Since we want to verify that the sum of all the probabilities is 1, we will leave each probability in exact fraction form rather than in approximate decimal form.

\n" ); document.write( "P(0 women):

\n" ); document.write( "P(1 woman):

\n" ); document.write( "P(2 women):

\n" ); document.write( "P(3 women):

\n" ); document.write( "P(4 women):

\n" ); document.write( "P(5 women):

\n" ); document.write( "Verify that the sum of the probabilities is 1:

\n" ); document.write( "\"%283125%2B18750%2B45000%2B54000%2B32400%2B7776%29%2F11%5E5=161051%2F161051=1\"

\n" ); document.write( "The probabilities for the different cases are correct, so we can find the answer to the problem:

\n" ); document.write( "ANSWER: The probability that among the first 5 customers served at least 2 are women is

\n" ); document.write( "\"%2845000%2B54000%2B32400%2B7776%29%2F161051+=+139176%2F161051\"

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