A bag contains 5 red and 4 blue identical balls. Id two balls are selected at random from the bag, one after the other, with replacement, find the probabili...
A bag contains 5 red and 4 blue identical balls. Id two balls are selected at random from the bag, one after the other, with replacement, find the probability that the first is red and the second is blue
Answer Details
When two balls are drawn from the bag with replacement, there are a total of $9\times9=81$ possible outcomes, since there are 9 balls in the bag and we are replacing each ball after drawing.
To find the probability that the first ball is red and the second ball is blue, we can use the multiplication rule of probability. The probability that the first ball is red is $\frac{5}{9}$, since there are 5 red balls out of 9 total balls in the bag. After replacing the first ball, there are still 9 balls in the bag, but now 4 of them are blue. So the probability that the second ball is blue, given that the first ball was red, is $\frac{4}{9}$.
Therefore, the probability that the first ball is red and the second ball is blue is:
$$\frac{5}{9} \times \frac{4}{9} = \frac{20}{81}$$
Hence the answer is $\frac{20}{81}$.