Question

In an experiment, 100 drawing pins are dropped on a floor. 73 point up and the rest point down. A pin is selected at random and is dropped. What is the probability that the pin will land point down?
A. 0.73
B. 0.27
C. 0.37
D. 0.72

Answer 1

The pin has only two options: either it can point downward or upward as we are given the chances of getting the value for pointing upward. Use it to find the value for pointing downward and then divide it by 100.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Probability is simply how likely something is to happen.
Whenever we’re unsure about the outcome of an event, we can talk about the probabilities of certain outcomes—how likely they are. The analysis of events governed by probability is called statistics.
Here we have total pins =100
No. of pins that landed pointed up=73
So the number of pins that landed pointed down would be 100−73=27
So now as we have these then
P(the pin selected and dropped would be pointed down) is equal to the number of pins pointed down divide by total number of pins
$\therefore probability = \dfrac{{27}}{{100}} = 0.27$
Thus the probability that the pin will land down is 0.27

So, the correct answer is “Option B”.

Note: We can also do this question by first finding the probability for the pin to face upward and then subtract the result by 1. This is only possible if and only if only two possibilities are there. Also note that
The probability of an event can only be between 0 and 1 and can also be written as a percentage.
The probability of event A is often written as $P(A)$
If $P(A) > P(B)$ , then event A has a higher chance of occurring than event B.
IF $P(A) = P(B)$ , then the events A and B are equally likely to occur.