Sock up your Mood!

Ten red socks and ten blue socks are all mixed up in a dresser drawer. The 20 socks are exactly alike except for their colour. The room is in pitch darkness and you want two matching socks. What is the smallest number of socks you must take out of the drawer in order to be certain that you have a pair that match?


The answer is 3.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Vatsalya Tandon
Dec 14, 2014

When you will take out 2 socks, you wouldn't be ale to figure it out whether it is a pair or not, because the probability is 1 10 \frac{1}{10} . But, when you will take out 3 socks, you would have a probability of 3 20 \frac{3}{20} . Hence 2 of the three will be of the same color.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...