Question Video: Determining the Probability of an Event Mathematics

Video Transcript

The table shows the results of a survey that asked 100 people to vote for their favourite type of TV program. What is the probability that a randomly selected person prefers drama?

In this question, we are given a table that shows five types of TV program and the number of people that classified them as their favourite type. We are asked to find the probability that a randomly selected person prefers drama.

Recall that probability can be written as a fraction, where the numerator is the number of successful outcomes and the denominator is the total number of outcomes. This holds provided that every item is equally likely to be selected. As 100 people were surveyed, the total number of outcomes is 100. 14 people voted for drama. So, the number of successful outcomes is 14.

We can therefore conclude that the probability that a randomly selected person prefers drama is 14 out of 100. Since both the numerator and denominator are divisible by two, the fraction can be simplified to seven over 50.