ShmoopTube

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Here's a shmoopy question for you...

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A bag of jellybeans includes the following:

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If one jellybean is chosen at random, what is the probability that it is a watermelon flavored jellybean?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Ok, so what's this question really asking?

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Well, it's clearly a probability question

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...where we just know that the answer is going to be some small number of things out of some

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larger number of things. And in this case, uh... that's the case.

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The problem is asking for a simple, one step probability quotient --

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we'll choose one jellybean of a certain type out of all the total available jellybeans.

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The question tells us that there are 8 watermelon beans -- so again that red light should go

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off that 8 is going to be in the numerator.

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The denominator is going to be the sum total of all of our choices.

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And it'd be really mean but totally fair if they threw in curveballs here by giving

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us random facts that don't matter -- like, instead of them all being jellybeans...

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...there were 5 lima beans, 3 pinto beans...

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We have to make sure to throw those out because we are ONLY dealing with jelly beans here.

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And the answer is pretty straightforward -- we have a total of 6 plus 10 plus 12 plus 8 or

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a total of 36 jellybeans So the odds of picking a watermelon jellybean

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out of ALL jellybeans is 8 over 36... ...which simplifies to 2 over 9.

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So our answer is B.

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You know what... maybe we'll just pass on dessert.

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