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Probability Formulae

Show that you know which formula to use for each probability question. A drag and drop challenge.

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\(P(A) = \frac{n(A)}{n(U)}\)

\(P(A)+P(A')=1\)

\(P(A \cup B)=P(A) + P(B) - P(A \cap B)\)

\(P(A \cup B)=P(A) + P(B)\)

\(P(A|B) = \frac{P(A\cap B}{P(B)}\)

\(P(A \cap B) = P(A)P(B)\)

Drag each formula above onto the problem they can help solve.

There are 25 students in the class.
Five of these students are in a band.
If a student is picked at random from the class, what is the probability that they are in the band?

The probability that the train will be on time is 0.7
What is the probability the train will not be on time?

What is the probability of getting a head or a six when rolling a fair dice and tossing a normal, unbiased coin.

The probability that a student at a school is under 13 is 0.3
The probability that a student at the same school is over 16 is 0.2
If a student is picked at random from the school, what is the probability that they are either under 13 or over 16?

There are 10 red and 5 blue watches in a bag.
5 of the red watches are faulty.
3 of the blue watches are faulty.
A watch is picked out of the bag and is seen to be faulty. What is the probability that it is red given that it is faulty?

The probability that it will rain tomorrow is 0.7
The probability that a student in this class will have their birthday tomorrow is 0.45
What is the probability that both of these events will happen?

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Comment recorded on the 18 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs. Peacock, Downe House School and Kennet School:

"My year 8's absolutely loved the "Separated Twins" starter. I set it as an optional piece of work for my year 11's over a weekend and one girl came up with 3 independant solutions."

Comment recorded on the 19 October 'Starter of the Day' page by E Pollard, Huddersfield:

"I used this with my bottom set in year 9. To engage them I used their name and favorite football team (or pop group) instead of the school name. For homework, I asked each student to find a definition for the key words they had been given (once they had fun trying to guess the answer) and they presented their findings to the rest of the class the following day. They felt really special because the key words came from their own personal information."

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Numeracy

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Level 1 - Drag the questions to match the formulae

Exam Style Questions - A collection of problems in the style of GCSE or IB/A-level exam paper questions (worked solutions are available for Transum subscribers).

More on this topic including lesson Starters, visual aids, investigations and self-marking exercises.

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Example

You may also want to use a calculator to check your working. See Calculator Workout skill ##.

Don't wait until you have finished the exercise before you click on the 'Check' button. Click it often as you work through the questions to see if you are answering them correctly. You can double-click the 'Check' button to make it float at the bottom of your screen.

Answers to this exercise are available lower down this page when you are logged in to your Transum account. If you don’t yet have a Transum subscription one can be very quickly set up if you are a teacher, tutor or parent.

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