2014 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 18
Contents
Problem
Four children were born at City Hospital yesterday. Assume each child is equally likely to be a boy or a girl. Which of the following outcomes is most likely?
Solution 1
We'll just start by breaking cases down. The probability of A occurring is . The probability of B occurring is .
The probability of C occurring is , because we need to choose 2 of the 4 slots to be girls.
For D, there are two possible cases, 3 girls and 1 boy or 3 boys and 1 girl. The probability of the first case is because we need to choose 1 of the 4 slots to be a boy. However, the second case has the same probability because we are choosing 1 of the 4 children to be a girl, so the total probability is .
So out of the four fractions, D is the largest. So our answer is
Solution 2
We can also find out how many total cases there are for one solution. This will work, because before simplifying, the denominators of the fraction will be the same. Both and have possibility. will have possibilities. has possibilities (note that the problem did not say a specific gender.) Therefore, will have the greatest probability of occurring.
See Also
2014 AMC 8 (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 17 |
Followed by Problem 19 | |
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