Statistics And Probability Question 459

Question: A bag ?A? contains 2 white and 3 red balls and bag ?B? contains 4 white and 5 red balls. One ball is drawn at random from a randomly chosen bag and is found to be red. The probability that it was drawn from bag ?B? was

[BIT Ranchi 1988; IIT 1976]

Options:

A) $ \frac{5}{14} $

B) $ \frac{5}{16} $

C) $ \frac{5}{18} $

D) $ \frac{25}{52} $

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Answer:

Correct Answer: D

Solution:

  •         Let  $ E_1 $  be the event that the ball is drawn from bag  $ A,\,E_2 $  the event that it is drawn from bag  $ B $  and  $ E $  that the ball is red.We have to find  $ P(E_2/E) $ . Since both the bags are equally likely to be selected, we have  $ P(E_1)=P(E_2)=\frac{1}{2} $  Also  $ P(E/E_1)=3/5 $  and  $ P(E/E_2)=5/9. $  Hence by Bay?s theorem, we have  $ P(E_2/E)=\frac{P(E_2)\,P(E/E_2)}{P(E_1)\,P(E/E_1)+P(E_2)\,P(E/E_2)} $      $ =\frac{\frac{1}{2}.\frac{5}{9}}{\frac{1}{2}.\frac{3}{5}+\frac{1}{2}.\frac{5}{9}}=\frac{25}{52}. $