Alice has a bag that contains 15 Snickers bars, 17 Milky Ways, 18 Kit-Kats, 20 Almond Joys, and 10 Reese’s Cups. In the space below, make a probability distribution for this bag of candy.

Question

Alice has a bag that contains 15 Snickers bars, 17 Milky Ways, 18 Kit-Kats, 20 Almond Joys, and 10 Reese’s Cups. In the space below, make a probability distribution for this bag of candy. 

Answer 1

Hi Alice,

Let's first define what probability distribution is. It is a table which lists all the possible outcomes of a certain event with corresponding probabilities and the summation of all these probabilities always equals 1. To calculate each probability we use the following formula: P= (Number of favorable items)/(Total number of items). For example the probability of randomly picking snickers will be p = (number of snickers)/ (total n of candies). The total number of candies will be 15+17+18+20+10 = 80.

In this case the event would be randomly picking a candy. We should have the following:

Snickers Bar p = 15/80 = 0.1875

Milky Way p = 17/80 = 0.2125

Kit-Kat p = 18/80 = 0.225

Almond Joy p = 20/80 = 0.25

Reese's Cup p = 10/80 = 0.125