Question Error Report

Thank you for reporting, we will resolve it shortly

Back to Question

Q. Two cards from an ordinary deck of $52$ cards are missing. What is the probability that a random card drawn from this deck is a spade?

Probability - Part 2

Solution:

Let $E$ be the event that the randomly drawn card is a spade. Let $F_i$ be the event that spades are missing from the $50$-card (defective) deck, for $i = 0$, $1$, $2$.
We want $P(E)$, which we compute by conditioning on how many spades are missing from the original deck :
$P(E) = P(E|F_0) P(F_0) + P(E|F_1) P(F_1) + P(E|E_2) P(F_2)$
$= \frac{13}{50} \frac{\binom{13}{0}\binom{39}{2}}{\binom{52}{2}}+\frac{12}{50} \frac{\binom{13}{1}\binom{39}{1}}{\binom{52}{2}}+\frac{11}{50} \frac{\binom{13}{2}\binom{39}{0}}{\binom{52}{2}}$
$ = \frac{1}{4}$