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February 08, 2009 05:07 PM

How do you answer this Math question? I came across this little devil at a brainteaser booklet.

A box contains 3 glazed doughnuts, 4 jelly doughnuts and 5 chocolate doughnuts. If a person selects one doughnut at random, find the probablity that is either a glazed doughnut or a chocolate doughnut.

Please help me with this one. I'm a very curious person. Can't sleep if I don't know the answer for this one.
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February 08, 2009 05:42 PM
All you need to know is the amount of glazed doughnuts and chocolate doughnuts, the total number of doughnuts. The amount of jelly doughnuts is just used to add the total amount, so you can say there are 12 doughnuts. Of the 12 doughnuts there are 3 glazed doughnuts and 5 chocolate doughnuts. Getting either a glazed doughnut or a chocolate doughnut is mutually exclusive, which means they cannot occur at the same time.

There is a rule in probability when dealing with mutually exclusive events (you know it's mutually exclusive because it says, "either or"), you simply add the two events together, and divide by the total.

3 Glazed Doughnuts = 5 Chocolate Doughnuts = 8 Doughnuts You Could Pick Up

So, (3/12) +(5/12) = 8/12

8/12 = 2/3

2/3 approximately equals 66%

So, you have a 2 out of 3 chance of getting either a glazed doughnut or chocolate doughnut.

Therefore you have approximately a 66% chance of either glazed or chocolate.


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February 08, 2009 05:45 PM
This one's actually pretty straightforward. If you add the glazed and chocolate doughnuts together you get eight doughnuts. The total number of doughnuts is 12. Therefore the probability is 8/12.

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February 08, 2009 05:46 PM
i'm terrible with math. 12 doughnuts into 100 is 8.33% per doughnut. 3 glazed multiplied by 8.33 = 24.99% you would pick glazed. 5 chocolate x 8.33=41.65% you would pick chocolate.

so 65.64% you would pick glazed or chocolate

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February 09, 2009 12:10 AM
You can figure this out easily, by thinking of what the chances of picking the other donuts. There are only 4 jelly donuts, the other 8 are glazed or chocolate. 4/12 is one third, or 33%. So there's a 66.6% chance of picking chocolate or glazed.

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