In an oral examination, 3 out of 10 questions are randomly selected for a student to answer. If the student answers correctly to 2 of the selected questions, they pass the test. Given that a student can answer 6 out of the 10 questions, what is the probability of them passing?
Problem 146
Official solution
First, let's consider all possible combinations for selecting 3 questions out of 10. The number of combinations is given by the binomial coefficient . This can be computed as:
The student will pass if they answer correctly to exactly 2 questions or all 3 of the selected questions.
The number of ways to select 1 question that the student cannot answer (from the 4 that they cannot answer correctly) and 2 questions they can answer (from the 6 that they can) is given by the product . This can be computed as:
The number of ways to select 3 questions they can answer is given by . This can be computed as:
Adding these two numbers up gives us the total number of successful outcomes, which is .
Hence, the probability of the student passing is the ratio of the number of successful outcomes to the total number of possible outcomes, which is:
So, the probability that the student passes the test is .