What is the Probability of Picking Up "Good" alphabets?

[zaid_iec]

Dear All,

We had Quiz competition in our company, where we had one round where Teams have to pick 8 alphabets from bowl randomly .Total 42 Alphabets in bowl (2 set of 21 alphabets (excluding 5 vowels)). Now Team E got difficult alphabets.

Please tell me is there any probability of Team A getting good set of alphabets and subsequent teams having less probability of picking up the good alphabets. Please support answer with probability theory.

There were total 5 Teams and Teams were asked to pick the alphabets in sequence (Team A to Team E) in a random manner and alphabets are not replaced back.

Regards
Mohammad

 

[Jim Wynne]

Re: Probability of Picking up Alphabets ?

• I'm not sure what you mean by "alphabets."
• Each team selects eight things at each turn?
• What is the difference between a "good" alphabet and a "difficult" alphabet? What's the object?

 

[zaid_iec]

Re: What is the Probability of Picking up "good" alphabets ?

Alphabets means letters (B, D, F, G .. etc excluding Vowels). In the bowl there were 42 letters (2 set of 21 letters excluding vowels). Team A picked up 8 letters form the bowl and so on in the last Team E picked up 8 letters from the 10 letters left in the bowl. It was all random picking.

Good Letters may be like N, O, C, T etc.
Bad letters means like X, V, Q, Y etc from which there is less probability of making any words.

My question is does this way of picking up of letters have any significance ? Team E is saying that all good letters were picked up first and they are left with bad letters. Is this argument correct. I think till last round probability of picking up any letter is same since all selection was done randomly.

 

[Livika]

Re: What is the Probability of Picking up "good" alphabets ?

Team E can be right saying that all "good letters" were already picked up but it does not mean that it is caused by way of picking. It is only coincidence, random, chance, fortune. But if you will not define exactly which letters are considered good and bad (number of good ones from 42 - or from 2 times 21 letters) it is impossible to do any calculation.

 

[zaid_iec]

Thanks Livika,

Team E got the letters Q, X, K, T, Y , V, W, G. And they are sayin Q, X, V, W are bad ones.

Can i justify to them that this is only because of luck, Probability of picking up the letters were equal to all teams whether to start from A or E.

Regards
Mohammad

 

[Jim Wynne]

Thanks Livika,

Team E got the letters Q, X, K, T, Y , V, W, G. And they are sayin Q, X, V, W are bad ones.

Can i justify to them that this is only because of luck, Probability of picking up the letters were equal to all teams whether to start from A or E.

Regards
Mohammad

IF the draw is blind and random--the person selecting the letters can't see them and each letter has an equal chance of being selected each time--the order of selection doesn't matter. This should be easy to demonstrate.

What is the purpose of this exercise?

 

[zaid_iec]

From the letters selected they have to form words within 2 Minutes. Team E hard luck they got tough letters and scored very less points. Now they are arguing over the fairness of this round.