Probability

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Probability

by student22 » Wed May 12, 2010 1:22 pm
If 2 different representatives are to be selected at random from a group of 10 employees and if p is the probability that both representatives selected will be women, is p > 1/2?

(1) More than 1/2 of the 10 employees are women.
(2) The probability that both representatives selected will be men is less than 1/10

OA:
E

All of the solutions that I've found used combinations. Can somebody help me with this problem using only probability. Here's my solution, and why I think it's B. Please let me know where I went wrong.

Statement 1, I know why it's wrong.

For statement 2,

The only way that the probability of both men is: 2/10 * 1/9 = 1/45 < 1/10

That means that there will be 8 women, so 8/10 * 7/9 = 56/90 > 1/2. Sufficient.
Source: — Data Sufficiency |

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by Toph@GMAT_REBOOT » Wed May 12, 2010 1:33 pm
If it were 7 women and 3 men.

M: 3/10 x 2/9 = 6/90. (< 1/10)
W: 7/10x6/9 = 42/90. (<1/2)

The work you've already done proves that it could it were 8 women and 2 men, that there could be less than a 10% chance of two men being selected, while p is > 1/2. So Statement 2 is not sufficient. Statement 1 adds nothing, since statement 2 already implies that more than 1/2 the employees are women. Therefore, the answer isn't C. Therefore, the answer is E.
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by student22 » Wed May 12, 2010 1:49 pm
Ah, I see what I did wrong. I had a small arithmetic error when I was calculating M: 3/10 * 2/9 . For some reason I got 2/15. That's why I thought B was sufficient.

Thanks for pointing that out.