Probability worksheet — GCSE Foundation

1.Two cards are dealt one after the other from an ordinary pack of 52 playing cards. The first card is not put back before the second is dealt. The pack contains 4 aces. Work out the probability that neither card is an ace. Give your answer as a product of two fractions.

2.A market research company found that, out of 120 shoppers surveyed, 42 preferred paper bags to plastic bags. A supermarket expects 900 shoppers this week. Using this relative frequency, work out how many of the 900 shoppers would be expected to prefer paper bags.

3.Bag A contains 3 red balls and 2 blue balls. Bag B contains 1 red ball and 3 blue balls. One ball is taken at random from each bag. Work out the probability that both balls are red.

4.An ordinary pack of 52 playing cards contains 13 hearts. One card is taken at random from the pack. Work out the probability that the card is not a heart. Give your answer as a percentage.

5.Two fair four-sided dice, numbered 1 to 4, are rolled and the two scores are added together. Work out the probability that the total is 5.

6.A card is taken at random from an ordinary pack of 52 playing cards. The probability that the card is a diamond is 1/4. Work out the probability that the card is not a diamond.

7.A frequency tree records 320 calls to a helpline. The calls first split into calls about billing and calls about technical support. Of the technical support calls, the probability that a call was resolved on the first contact is 0.75. If 180 technical support calls were resolved on the first contact, work out how many calls were about billing.

8.Two fair five-sided dice, numbered 1 to 5, are rolled. Work out the probability that the two scores differ by at least 2.

9.The probability that a plant grown from a seed packet germinates is 7/10. Work out the probability that it does not germinate.

10.A fair coin is flipped and a fair three-sided spinner, labelled X, Y and Z, is spun. Every outcome is listed as a pair, such as (H, X). Work out the probability that the outcome is a head and Z.

11.Spinner E has 4 equal sections, numbered 1 to 4. Spinner F has 6 equal sections, numbered 1 to 6. Both spinners are spun once. Work out the probability of getting at least one 3.

12.A fair six-sided dice is rolled 120 times. Work out how many of the rolls you would expect to give a score of 3 or more.

13.A box contains counters that are silver, bronze or copper only. The probability that a counter taken at random is silver is 1/2 and the probability that it is bronze is 1/8. The box contains 64 counters in total. Work out the number of copper counters.

14.Jack rolls two ordinary fair dice and adds the two scores together. Work out the probability that the total is 6.

15.A weather station records whether it rains each day for 40 days: it rains on 9 of the days and does not rain on the rest. A local forecaster claims that the probability of rain on any day is 0.3. Work out the relative frequency of rain from the recorded data.