[Math] Probability of 5 cards drawn from shuffled deck

binomial-coefficientscard-gamescombinatoricsprobability

Five cards are drawn from a shuffled deck with $52$ cards. Find the probability that

a) four cards are aces

b) four cards are aces and the other is a king

c) three cards are tens and two are jacks

d) at least one card is an ace

My attempt:

a) $\left(13*12*\binom{4}{4}*\binom{4}{1}\right)/\binom{52}{5}$

b) same as (a)?

c) $\left(13 * 12 * \binom{4}{3} * \binom{4}{2}\right)/\binom{52}{5}$

d) $\left(13 * \binom{4}{1}\right)/\binom{52}{5}$

Best Answer

a) There are $ \binom{52}{5} = 2,598,960 $ ways of choosing 5 cards. There are $\binom{4}{4} = 1 $ way to select the 4 aces. So there are $\binom{48}{1}= 48 $ ways to select the remaining card. Thus there are a total of 48 ways to select 5 cards such that 4 of them are aces, and the probability is: $\frac{48}{2,598,960} = \frac{1}{54,145}$.

b) There are $\binom{4}{4} = 1 $ way to choose the 4 aces, and there are $\binom{4}{1} = 4 $ ways to choose a king. So there are $1\times4 = 4 $ ways to choose 5 cards such that 4 are aces and the other is a king card. The probability is: $\frac{4}{2,598,960} = \frac{1}{649,740} $.

c) There are $\binom{4}{3} = 4 $ ways to choose 3 ten cards, and there are $\binom{4}{2} = 6 $ ways of choosing 2 jacks. So there are $ 4\times 6 = 24 $ ways to choose 5 cards such that 3 are ten and 2 are jacks. The probability for this case is: $\frac{24}{2,598,960} = \frac{1}{108,290} $.

d) The probability of 5 non-ace cards is: $\frac{\binom{48}{5}}{\binom{52}{5}} = \frac{1,712,304}{2,598,960} = 0.6588 $, so the probability of getting 5 card at least one ace is: $1 - 0.6588 = 0.34$.