Probability of picking balls without replacement

probability

Jar contains 14 balls – 5 reds,4 blue,3 green and 2 yellow. I grab 4 balls at once. What is the probability I get 2 reds,1 blue and 1 green balls (order does not matter).

I can compute the probability for specific sequence say red,red green blue
but there are many of them so this looks cumbersome. I wonder what is the standard way to solve this problem without listing explicitly all valid sequences.

Thanks!

Best Answer

The total number of (equally likely) outcomes is $14 \choose 4$ For a outcome to be favorable, you need to get 2 red balls out of 5, 1 blue out of 4, 1 green out of 3 and 0 yellow out of 2, so the total number of favorable outcomes is: ${5\choose 2}{4\choose 1}{3\choose 1}{2\choose 0}$ So the probability you are looking for is:

$$\frac{{5\choose 2}{4\choose 1}{3\choose 1}{2\choose 0}}{14 \choose 4}$$