In the card game bridge, the 52 cards are dealt out equally to 4 players

card-gamescombinatoricsprobability

I misunderstand conditional probability as in this problem

In the card game bridge, the 52 cards are dealt out equally to 4 players—called East,
West, North, and South. If North and South have a total of 8 spades among them,
what is the probability that East has 3 of the remaining 5 spades?

My calculation is.

Let E denote:" East has 3 of the remaining 5 spades" and F:" North and South have a total of 8 spades among them".

Since $ P(E|F)= \frac {P(EF)} {P(F)} $

For $P(F)= \frac {{13 \choose 8} * {39 \choose 18}} {{52 \choose 26}}$ =0,161

And $P(EF)= \frac {{13 \choose 8}*{39 \choose 18}*{5 \choose 3}*{18 \choose 10}}{{52\choose 26}*{26 \choose 13}}$ =0,32.
But the answer is 0,339. What is wrong with my calculation?

Best Answer

We need to condition on the $26$ cards received by East and West. If North and South have eight spades between them, they also have $26 - 8 = 18$ non-spades. That means of the $26$ cards East and West receive, $13 - 8 = 5$ are spades and $39 - 18 = 21$ are non-spades.

We wish to find the probability that East receives three of the five remaining spades. East must receive $13$ of the remaining $26$ cards. If East receives $3$ of the remaining five spades, then East must also receive $13 - 3 = 10$ of the $21$ remaining non-spades. Hence, the probability that East receives three of the five remaining spades $$\frac{\dbinom{5}{3}\dbinom{21}{10}}{\dbinom{26}{13}}$$