Counting problem with numbered deck of cards, probability one card is exactly double another

combinatoricsprobability

I've recently purchased a book I assume has an incorrect solution to this problem. I wanted to run my solution by you

Assume you have a deck of 100 cards with values ranging from 1 to 100 and that you draw two cards at random without replacement. What is probability one card is precisely double that of the other?

My solution:

  • Assume first card can be double or second card can be double
  • If first card is double it can be any even number (50 choices)
  • If first card is double, second card has 1/99 probability of being the half-card

So for the first card to be double, the probability is: 50 * 1/100 * 1/99
For the second card to be double, we simply double our total probability.

So the probability of drawing two cards, where one is double the other, is: 2 * 1/2 * 1/99 or 0.0101

Can someone let me know if I'm correct?

The book's solution is double this, saying since order does not matter there are exactly 50 * 2 = 100 ways to draw such a pair. So the desired probability is 100/(100 choose 2).

Best Answer

Yes your answer is correct and the previous answer is simpler to go by. Alternatively we can count them as,

All even numbers in the first fifty have two possible choices for the second while all odd numbers in the first fifty have one choice for the second. Coming to the second fifty ($51-100$), all even numbers have one choice for the second whereas odd numbers would not work.

So the probability is,

$ = \displaystyle \frac{1}{4} \cdot \frac{2}{99} + \frac{2}{4} \cdot \frac{1}{99} = \frac{1}{99}$

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