Probability – How to Determine if the 10th Ball is Blue

combinatoricsprobability

The following is a question I've made myself, but I need help in solving it:

Suppose there are 100 balls in a box. 20 balls are blue, 30 balls are green and 50 balls are yellow. Now we randomly pick out 10 balls out of the box (one ball after the other) and we don't put the balls back in the box.

What's the probability of the 10th ball being picked having color blue?

I tried thinking of all the possibilities of the the 10th ball being blue, divided by all of the possible combinations. I tried for several hours and couldn't figure out neither of them. Help is appreciated!

Best Answer

Suppose that instead of picking ten balls, you pick all 100 balls and put them into a row in the order you picked them. Every one of the $100!$ possible orders is equally likely, and $20\cdot99!$ have a blue ball in the 10th position. Therefore the probability is exactly $\frac{1}{5}$.

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