Probability worksheet — GCSE Foundation

1.Four bags each contain counters, some of which are winning counters. The probability of taking a winning counter is 5/12 from the red bag, 3/8 from the blue bag, 7/24 from the green bag and 1/3 from the yellow bag. Work out which bag has the smallest probability of giving a winning counter.

2.In a board game Mia moves forward by the total of two ordinary fair dice. Work out the probability that her total is 7. Give your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.

3.Two goalkeepers face penalty kicks. Elin saves 34% of the penalties she faces. Noah saves 11/32 of the penalties he faces. Which statement correctly compares them?

4.A pack contains 6 cards, numbered 1 to 6. A card is drawn at random from the pack, and a fair coin is flipped. Work out the probability of drawing an even-numbered card and the coin landing on tails.

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.In a class experiment a fair six-sided dice is rolled 60 times and lands on a six 14 times. The whole school then rolls the same fair dice 3000 times. Work out the best estimate of the number of sixes the school should expect.

7.A fair four-sided dice, numbered 1 to 4, is rolled twice. Every outcome is listed as an ordered pair, first roll then second roll, such as (2, 3). Work out how many different outcomes are in the list.

8.A bag contains 45 sweets. 18 of the sweets are lemon flavour and the rest are orange. A sweet is taken at random, its flavour is recorded, and it is put back in the bag. This is repeated 200 times. Work out how many times you would expect an orange sweet to be taken.

9.A biased spinner is spun 40 times and lands on red 16 times. It is then spun a further 60 times and lands on red 21 times. Work out the best estimate of the probability that the spinner lands on red, using the results of all 100 spins together.

10.120 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.

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

12.A quality inspector tests 145 light bulbs and finds that 33 are faulty. Work out the relative frequency of a bulb being faulty, as a percentage correct to 1 decimal place.

13.A tree diagram shows two rounds of a game, played independently. On each round, the probability of losing is 0.7 and the probability of winning is 0.3. Work out the probability of losing both rounds.

14.Two fair coins are thrown together 400 times. Work out how many of the 400 throws you would expect to give one head and one tail.

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