Three red balls, five green balls, and a number of blue balls are put together in a sack. One ball is picked at random from the sack. If the probability of ...

Answer Details

(a) Let the number of blue balls be x.

The probability of picking a red ball is 1/6, which means there is only one red ball in the sack.

Therefore, the total number of balls in the sack is:

1 (red ball) + 5 (green balls) + x (blue balls) = 6 + x

The probability of picking a red ball is the number of red balls in the sack divided by the total number of balls in the sack. So we can write:

1/(6 + x) = 1/6

Solving for x, we get:

6 + x = 6

x = 0

Therefore, there are 0 blue balls in the sack.

(b) The probability of picking a green ball is the number of green balls in the sack divided by the total number of balls in the sack.

Since we know there are 5 green balls and 1 red ball in the sack (and 0 blue balls, as we found in part (a)), the total number of balls in the sack is:

1 (red ball) + 5 (green balls) + 0 (blue balls) = 6

So the probability of picking a green ball is:

5/6

Therefore, the probability of picking a green ball is 5/6.