A Hard Probability Question????

Logic Level 2

A bag contains only red and blue marbles. Yasmine takes one marble at random from the bag. The probability that she takes a red marble is 1 in 5. Yasmine returns the marble to the bag and adds five more red marbles to the bag. The probability that she takes one red marble at random is now 1 in 3. How many red marbles were originally in the bag?

3 6 2 5 7

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2 solutions

Jordan Cahn
Oct 12, 2018

Let R {\color{#D61F06}R} be the number of red marbles in the bag and let B {\color{#3D99F6}B} be the number of blue marbles in the bag. From the first drawing, we know that R R + B = 1 5 R + B = 5 R \begin{aligned} \frac{{\color{#D61F06}R}}{{\color{#D61F06}R}+ {\color{#3D99F6}B}} &= \frac{1}{5} \\ {\color{#D61F06}R}+ {\color{#3D99F6}B} &= 5{\color{#D61F06}R} \end{aligned}

From the second drawing, we know that R + 5 R + B + 5 = 1 3 R + B + 5 = 3 R + 15 5 R + 5 = 3 R + 15 2 R = 10 R = 5 \begin{aligned} \frac{{\color{#D61F06}R} + 5}{{\color{#D61F06}R}+ {\color{#3D99F6}B} + 5} &= \frac{1}{3} \\ {\color{#D61F06}R}+ {\color{#3D99F6}B} + 5&= 3{\color{#D61F06}R} + 15 \\ 5{\color{#D61F06}R} + 5 &= 3{\color{#D61F06}R} + 15 \\ 2{\color{#D61F06}R} &= 10 \\ {\color{#D61F06}R} &= \boxed{5} \end{aligned}

Krishna Karthik
Nov 6, 2018

Simultaneous equations.

*Let r be the number of red marbles there originally were in the bag, and b be the number of blue marbles that were in the bag. *

we can say:

r r + b \frac{r}{r+b} = 1 5 \frac{1}{5}

Now after you add five red marbles, you're number of favourable outcomes (picking red) increases by five and so does your bag size.

So we can now say:

r + 5 r + b + 5 \frac{r+5}{r+b+5} = 1 3 \frac{1}{3}

simplifying equation two yields

2 r + 10 = b 2r+10=b

equating equation 1 and 2, we get

2 r + 10 = 4 r 2r+10=4r

solving for r, which is the number of red marbles, we get

r=5

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