You are in a pitch black room and need to get a pair of socks out of your drawer which can contain up to 100 socks. In the drawer is a mixture of black and white socks, and there's at least one pair of either color. If you choose two socks, the chance that you draw out a black pair is 2/3.

What is the chance that you draw out a white pair?
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Bonus: what would the answer be if the drawer contained between 100 and 1000 socks?

Initially there are 55 socks in the drawer, 45 of these are black.

this gives the equation as

(45/55)*(44/54)=0.66666667, for a black pair,

switching this for the white gives

(10/55)*(9/54)=0.030303.

Posted by Juggler on 2004-09-01 18:28:13