Finite Probability

Question

In a recent taste test, a person was eight times as likely to prefer the taste of diet cola A to diet cola B. One of these people are selected. What probability should we assign the event "the person prefers the taste of diet cola A"?

Answer 1

Hi Cassie!

 

The probability of the event happening would be:  "the number of times the event we care about could happen" divided by "all of the possible events there are".

 

In this case, the ones we care about are 8 (the number of people who prefer diet cola A) and the ones we don't care about are 1 (the number of people who prefer diet cola B).  So the total number of possible events would be 9 (8 + 1).

 

Therefore, the probability of the event "the person prefers the taste of diet cola A" would be 8 divided by 9. Or:

 

 8/9

 

If this doesn't answer your question or you have a follow up, please message me.

 

Jeff

Answer 2

8 times diet cola A 

1 time diet cola B 

8+1=9 

Probability that the person prefers diet A is 8/9=0.89