A store has 16 flashlights on its shelf and 2 of them are de

A store has 16 flashlights on its shelf and 2 of them are defective. A customer buys 3 flashlights that are selected randomly from these 16. What is the probability that exactly one of these three flashlights is defective?

Solution

There are 16C3 ways to choose any three.

There are 14C2 ways to choose 2 non-defective, and 2C1 ways to choose 1 defective. Hence, there are (14C2)*(2C1) ways to do this.

Thus,

P = [14C2 * 2C1] / (16C3) = 0.325 [ANSWER]