Probability worksheet — GCSE Foundation

1.A council surveyed 140 households about recycling. 85 of the households are in Zone A. 52 of the Zone A households recycle glass. 21 of the Zone B households do not recycle glass. Work out the probability that a household, chosen at random from the 140, recycles glass. Give your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.

2.Two ordinary fair dice are rolled. Work out the probability that the difference between the two scores is 1.

3.Priya and Ben each want to estimate the probability that a coin lands on heads. Priya flips the coin 50 times and works out her relative frequency. Ben flips the same coin 500 times and works out his relative frequency. Whose relative frequency is more likely to be close to the true probability? Give a reason for your answer.

4.Ellie drops a bottle top and records whether it lands open end up. In her first 20 drops it lands open end up 13 times. She carries on, and after 200 drops in total it has landed open end up 84 times. Work out the best estimate of the probability that the bottle top lands open end up.

5.Two events are independent. The first has probability 2/5 and the second has probability 1/3. Work out the probability that both events happen.

6.The probability that Kofi passes his driving test on any attempt is 0.6, and each attempt is independent of the others. Work out the probability that he fails both his first two attempts.

7.Two ordinary fair dice are rolled and the two scores are added together. Work out the probability that the total is a prime number.

8.120 people took a driving theory test. A frequency tree records the results. The first pair of branches splits the 120 people into 70 men and 50 women. On the men's branch, 45 passed and the rest failed. On the women's branch, 38 passed and the rest failed. Work out how many of the 120 people failed the test.

9.A six-sided dice is rolled 12 times. It lands on a six 4 times. Erin says that the dice must be biased. Which of these is the best comment on Erin's statement?

10.At a coffee shop, each customer buys tea, coffee, water or juice, and never more than one of these. The probability that a customer buys tea is 0.36 and the probability that they buy juice is 0.04. The probability that a customer buys coffee is three times the probability that they buy water. Work out the probability that a customer buys water.

11.A factory finds that the probability a randomly chosen light bulb is defective is 0.035. In a batch of 4,000 bulbs, work out how many bulbs you would expect to work correctly.

12.At a youth club, 65 members are asked which sports they play. 27 play football, 21 play basketball, and 9 play both. Work out the number of members who play neither sport.

13.On a probability scale from 0 to 1, five descriptions are used: impossible (0), unlikely (between 0 and 0.5), evens (exactly 0.5), likely (between 0.5 and 1) and certain (1). The probability that a particular bus is late is 3/8. Which description best fits this probability?

14.A fair six-sided dice is rolled once. Write down the probability that the score is an even number.

15.A spinner lands on red, on blue or on green, and it cannot land on more than one colour at a time. The probability that it lands on red is 0.3 and the probability that it lands on blue is 0.5. Work out the probability that it lands on red or on blue.