[Math] Given a 4 digit PIN what is the probability of guessing the PIN in 3 tries.

probability

Since we have 4 digits there is a total of 10000 Password combinations possible.

Now after each trial the chance for a successful guess increases by a slight percentage because we just tried one password and now we remove that password from the "guessing set". That being said I am struggling with the actual calculation.

I first calculate the probability of me NOT guessing the password and then subtract that from 1.

\begin{align}
1-\frac{9999}{10000} \cdot \frac{9998}{10000} \cdot \frac{9997}{10000} = 0.059\%
\end{align}

Best Answer

The simple approach is that there are $10000$ possible PINs and you have tried $3$ of them, so your chance of finding the right one is $\frac 3{10000}$. In your calculation, the denominators should decrease $10000,9999,9998$, so you will get the same result.$$1-\frac {9999}{10000}\cdot \frac {9998}{9999}\cdot\frac{9997}{9998}=1-\frac {9997}{10000}=\frac 3{10000}$$

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