Probability worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A charity raffle sells 250 tickets. A group of friends buy 40 of the tickets between them. Three prizes are awarded, each to a different randomly drawn ticket, and no ticket can win more than one prize. Work out the expected number of prizes won by the group. Give your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.

2.A box holds 5 blue pens and 7 black pens. Two pens are taken at random, one at a time, and are not put back. The first pen taken is black. Work out the probability that the second pen taken is blue.

3.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.

4.The universal set is {1, 2, 3, ..., 15}. A = {multiples of 3}. Work out n(A′), the number of elements not in A.

5.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.

6.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.

7.A market stall sells umbrellas. Over the last 250 days, it rained on 70 of them. Using this as an estimate of the probability of rain, work out how many rainy days would be expected in the next 365 days.

8.Of the 70 students on the Year 10 geography trip, 42 are girls and the rest are boys. 24 of the girls and 10 of the boys brought a packed lunch. A student who did not bring a packed lunch is chosen at random. Work out the probability that this student is a girl.

9.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.

10.A red fair dice and a blue fair dice are rolled together. Every outcome is listed as an ordered pair, red score then blue score. Work out the probability that the red score is less than the blue score.

11.A machine produces bolts. In a sample of 250 bolts, 15 are faulty. Work out the relative frequency of a bolt being faulty, giving your answer as a fraction in its simplest form.

12.Grace rolls two ordinary fair dice at the same time and works out the total of the two scores. Work out the probability that the total is greater than 10.

13.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.

14.A survey found that, of 250 shoppers questioned, 68% said they had used a self-checkout in the past month. A different store expects 1400 shoppers this week. Using this relative frequency, work out how many of the 1400 shoppers would be expected to have used a self-checkout in the past month.

15.A company has 400 employees. 150 of them work part time and 160 of them cycle to work. Working part time and cycling to work are independent. Work out how many of the employees you would expect both to work part time and to cycle to work.