Question Video: Determining the Probability of an Event Mathematics • Third Year of Preparatory School

Video Transcript

The table shows the results of a survey that asked 30 students to vote for their favorite sport. What is the probability that a randomly selected student voted for basketball?

We are told in the question that 30 students completed a survey about their favorite sport. 12 students voted for football, nine students voted for basketball, three students voted for volleyball, and six students voted for swimming. We are asked to find the probability that a randomly selected student voted for basketball. We recall that probability is the likelihood or chance of an event occurring. And this probability can be written as a fraction where the numerator is the number of favorable outcomes and the denominator is the total number of outcomes.

In this question, there were 30 students in the survey and nine of them said basketball was their favorite sport. This means that the probability of selecting a student that voted for basketball is nine out of 30 or nine thirtieths. Both the numerator and denominator here are divisible by three. Since nine divided by three is three and 30 divided by three is 10, our fraction simplifies to three-tenths. This is the probability that a randomly selected student voted for basketball.