[Math] Suppose 5 red and 7 green balls are in a bag. Three balls are removed without replacement.

probabilityprobability distributionsstatistics

Suppose $5$ red and $7$ green balls are in a bag. Three balls are removed without replacement. What is the probability that the second and third balls are both green?

I'm having trouble figuring out how to go about this problem.

The way I see it is, that the first ball can be either red or green so P(R or G)?
Then the second and third ball must be green. So does this depend on the first choice. IS it a conditional probability?

Can I think of it this way:
$P(G)P(G)P(G) + P(R)P(G)P(G)$, i.e the probability of choosing green first then the other two being green plus the probability of choosing red first then the other two green?

Best Answer

Since the colour of the first ball is not known, the probability of the second and third being green is the same as if you only took out two balls and want the probability of them both being green. In both cases, you are essentially choosing $2$ balls at random from the $12$ balls.

This simplifies the problem. The probability of the first green is $\dfrac{7}{12}$. The probability of the second green is then $\dfrac{6}{11}$. Multiplying gives the required probability:

$$\dfrac{7}{12} \dfrac{6}{11} = \dfrac{7}{22}.$$