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2008 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 20

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Problem

The faces of a cubical die are marked with the numbers 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, and 4. The faces of another die are marked with the numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. What is the probability that the sum of the top two numbers will be 5, 7, or 9?

\mathrm{(A)}\ 5/18\qquad\mathrm{(B)}\ 7/18\qquad\mathrm{(C)}\ 11/18\qquad\mathrm{(D)}\ 3/4\qquad\mathrm{(E)}\ 8/9

Solution

The easiest way is to write a table of all 36 possible outcomes, do the sums, and count good outcomes.

     1  3  4  5  6  8
   ------------------
1 |  2  4  5  6  7  9
2 |  3  5  6  7  8 10
2 |  3  5  6  7  8 10
3 |  4  6  7  8  9 11
3 |  4  6  7  8  9 11
4 |  5  7  8  9 10 12

We see that out of 36 possible outcomes 4 give the sum of 5, 6 the sum of 7, and 4 the sum of 9, hence the resulting probability is \frac{4+6+4}{36}=\frac{14}{36}=\boxed{\frac{7}{18}}.


See also

2008 AMC 10B (ProblemsResources)
Preceded by
Problem 19
Followed by
Problem 21
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
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