Tom K. answered 12/19/20
Knowledgeable and Friendly Math and Statistics Tutor
Jon, I don't know why you are asking this question again and it shows up 0 answers when I answered it correctly previously. I notice that with other problems as well. I had one typo that did not impact my answer. If there is something that you do not understand about the answer, please ask.
The denominator is straightforward: C(28,9) 2 pairs of 14 shoes is 2*14 = 28; choose 9
For the numerator, there are C(14,2) ways that you can choose the 2 pairs. Then, there are 5 additional shoes. There are C(12,5) ways to choose which pair the shoe is from, and 2^5 to choose the shoe from the pair.
C(14,2)C(12,5)2^5/C(28,9) = 2306304/6906900 = 192/575 = 0.333913043478261