Q.A purse contains 3 silver and 6 copper coins and a second purse contains 4 silver and 3 copper coins. If a coin is drawn at random from one of the two purses, find the probability that it is a silver coin.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The problem is a classic case of the law of total probability — we pick a purse first (each equally likely), then a coin from it. The overall probability of drawing silver is .
Concept and intuition
When a coin is drawn at random from one of the two purses, the selection happens in two stages: first a purse is chosen, then a coin is drawn from that purse. Since the problem doesn't specify any bias in choosing the purse, we assume each purse is equally likely to be picked. This is a textbook application of the law of total probability — we break the event "silver coin" into mutually exclusive cases based on which purse was chosen.
The key insight: you cannot just average the two fractions and directly, because the purses have different numbers of coins. The correct weight is the probability of picking each purse, which is each.
Step-by-step solution
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Define the events clearly
Let be the event that the first purse is chosen, and that the second purse is chosen.
Let be the event that the drawn coin is silver.
Since the purse is chosen at random,
- Find the conditional probabilities In the first purse: 3 silver out of coins.
In the second purse: 4 silver out of coins.
- Apply the law of total probability The event can happen in two ways: either we pick the first purse and then draw silver, or we pick the second purse and then draw silver. Since these are mutually exclusive (you can't pick both purses), we add their probabilities:
Substitute the values:
- Compute carefully First term: …
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