Probability worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.Two ordinary fair dice are rolled, one after the other. Work out the probability that the first dice shows a 6 and the second dice shows an even number.

2.A bag contains 5 yellow marbles and 3 blue marbles. Noah takes a marble at random, notes its colour and puts it back in the bag. He then takes a second marble at random. Work out the probability that the first marble is yellow and the second marble is blue.

3.A basketball player has a free-throw success probability of 0.75. She wants to expect to score 60 successful free throws. Work out how many free throws she needs to attempt.

4.A train company runs 25 trains a day, every day. The probability that any one train is late is 0.08. Work out how many late trains the company should expect over a period of 4 weeks.

5.A charity raffle has three types of ticket: winning, near-miss and losing, and every ticket is exactly one of these. The probability that a ticket is winning is 1/8 and the probability that it is a near-miss is 1/4. Work out the probability that a ticket is losing.

6.A fair coin is flipped and a fair five-sided spinner, labelled 1 to 5, is spun. All the outcomes are listed as pairs, such as (H, 3). Work out the probability that the outcome is a tail and an odd number.

7.A bag contains beads that are exactly one of red, white or black. The probability of taking a red bead is 3/10 and the probability of taking a white bead is 1/4. Work out the probability of taking a bead that is red or white.

8.A machine makes 4000 light bulbs a day and runs 5 days a week. Two inspectors test bulbs from this machine. Inspector A tests 40 bulbs and finds 4 faulty. Inspector B tests 500 bulbs and finds 30 faulty. Using the better of the two estimates, work out how many faulty bulbs the machine is expected to make in one week.

9.The probability that a component is faulty is 1/10. Two components are tested independently. Work out the probability that at least one of the two components is faulty.

10.A basketball player takes two free throws, and the throws are independent. The probability of scoring on each throw is 0.6, and the probability of missing is 0.4. Work out the probability that she scores exactly one of the two throws.

11.At a fair, a game costs £2 to play. The probability of winning the game is 0.15, and each win pays out £10. Amir plays the game 200 times. Work out how much money Amir should expect to lose in total.

12.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.

13.Kwame flips a fair coin three times and writes down what it lands on each time. Work out the probability that it lands on heads all three times.

14.For two events A and B, P(A) = 0.6 and P(A and B) = 0.15. Work out P(B | A).

15.A biased six-sided dice is rolled once. The probability that it lands on 6 is 0.25. The other five scores are all equally likely. Work out the probability that it lands on 3.