Probability worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.In a survey of 45 students, 22 said they like reading, 18 said they like gaming, and 6 said they like both. Work out how many students like exactly one of reading or gaming.

2.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.

3.Two ordinary fair dice are rolled and the two scores are added together. Given that the total is an even number, work out the probability that the total is 8.

4.At a quiz night, each team's result is a win, a draw or a loss, and no team can have more than one of these results. The probability that a team wins is 42% and the probability that a team draws is 18.5%. Work out the probability, as a percentage, that a team does not win and does not draw.

5.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.

6.A pupil must choose 2 different subjects at random from these five: maths, physics, biology, chemistry and history. Work out the probability that the two subjects chosen are maths and biology.

7.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.

8.150 pupils are asked about swimming and cycling, and the results are recorded on a frequency tree. The first pair of branches splits the 150 pupils into 90 who swim and 60 who do not swim. Of the 90 who swim, 54 also cycle. Of the 60 who do not swim, 18 cycle. Work out P(S ∩ C), the probability that a pupil, chosen at random, swims and cycles. Give your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.

9.180 gardeners at an allotment were asked whether they grow vegetables organically. 100 of the gardeners are on the north plots. 64 of the north-plot gardeners grow organically. 30 of the south-plot gardeners do not grow organically. Work out how many south-plot gardeners grow organically.

10.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.

11.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.

12.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.

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 biased spinner is spun 200 times. It lands on red 70 times, on blue 50 times, and on green 80 times. Using these results, work out the expected number of times the spinner does NOT land on red, in 500 spins of the same spinner.

15.A drawer contains 4 red socks and 2 blue socks. Two socks are taken out at random, one after the other, without the first being put back. Work out the probability that both socks are the same colour.