[Math] Picking three random coins. Probability of them being the same and different material

probabilityprobability theory

You are given $6$ gold coins, $4$ silver coins, and $3$ bronze coins. You pick three coins at random. What is the probability that t$hey are all of different material? What is the probability that are all of the same material?

The first part is easy since you can do
$$
\frac{6}{13}\cdot \frac{4}{12} \cdot \frac{3}{11} = \frac{6}{143}.
$$

The second part is the one I am having trouble with. I know the probability of picking of picking only gold coins is $\frac{6}{13}\cdot\frac{5}{12}\cdot\frac{4}{11}$. I can do the same for silver and bronze. does this problem have to do rather with combinations, where I find the number of combinations that result in all gold, all silver, and all bronze. And then divide that by $13\cdot12\cdot11$?

Thank you for any assistance.

Best Answer

Use a combinatorial approach and assume that order doesn't matter. Then for the first question, we obtain: $$ \frac{\binom{6}{1}\binom{4}{1}\binom{3}{1}}{\binom{13}{3}} = \frac{6 \cdot 4 \cdot 3}{\frac{13 \cdot 12 \cdot 11}{3 \cdot 2}} = \frac{6 \cdot 4 \cdot 3}{13 \cdot 2 \cdot 11} = \frac{36}{143} $$ As bof pointed out in the comments, your answer was off by a factor of $3! = 6$, since you implicitly assumed a particular order of the $3$ types of coins.

For the second question, we consider all $3$ of each type of coin as separate cases (which was exactly what you were thinking of doing). This yields: $$ \frac{\binom{6}{3} + \binom{4}{3} + \binom{3}{3}}{\binom{13}{3}} = \frac{\frac{6 \cdot 5 \cdot 4}{3 \cdot 2} + 4 + 1}{\frac{13 \cdot 12 \cdot 11}{3 \cdot 2}} = \frac{5 \cdot 4 + 5}{13 \cdot 2 \cdot 11} = \frac{25}{286} $$

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