Why is the probability of pulling a blue marble on the third try independent of how many blue marbles we pull on the second or first- no-replacements

independenceprobability

A bag contains 10 identically-shaped marbles: 3 red, 4 blue, and 3 green. A person randomly pulls out the marbles one by one (without replacement).

What is the probability of pulling a blue marble on the 3rd try?

The answer is 4/10. I don't think that's right because what if were to pull blue on the first try or second try? Then my intuition says we have $<\dfrac{4}{10}$ on the 3rd try.

I don't think the subsequent draws are independent of the previous draws.

Best Answer

Two explanations.

  1. Suppose you imagine that someone has taken the marbles from the bag one at a time and arranged them in a line. Then the chance that the fourth marble is blue is clearly just $4/10$. That calculation does not depend on the colors of the marbles in the first three places.

  2. You are correct in asserting that the appearance of a blue marble on the fourth draw does indeed depend on what happens in the first three. That said, if you do the ugly conditional probability calculations you end up with $4/10$.

    I'll just do it for the second marble being blue. That probability is $3/9$ if the first marble is blue and $4/9$ if it's not. The probability that the first marble is blue is $4/10$. So the probability that the second is blue is $$ \frac{4}{10}\frac{3}{9} + \frac{6}{10}\frac{4}{9} = \frac{4}{10} \ . $$

Check out linearity of expectation.

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