Q.Two cards are drawn successively and without replacement from a well-shuffled deck of 52 cards. Find the probability that one card is red and the other is black.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The probability that one card is red and the other is black when drawing two cards without replacement is . This comes from the fact that the first card can be either colour, and the second card must be the opposite colour — the order doesn't matter because the two favourable sequences are mutually exclusive and symmetric.
Why conditional probability is the natural tool here
When we draw without replacement, the outcome of the second draw depends on what happened in the first. That's exactly the situation conditional probability handles: .
We want one red and one black. There are two ways this can happen:
- First red, then black.
- First black, then red.
These two sequences are mutually exclusive (they can't both happen in the same draw), so we can add their probabilities.
Step-by-step reasoning
1. Probability of first red, then black
- First card red: there are 26 red cards out of 52, so .
- After removing one red, 51 cards remain, of which 26 are black. So .
- Therefore:
2. Probability of first black, then red
- First card black: 26 black out of 52, so .
- After removing one black, 51 cards remain, of which 26 are red. So .
- Therefore:
3. Add the two mutually exclusive cases
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