Pierre asks Sherry a question involving the theoretical probability of a compound event in which you flip a coin and draw a marble from a bag of marbles. The bag of marbles contains 3 white marbles, 8 green marbles, and 9 black marbles. Sherry's answer, which is correct, is 12/40. What was Pierre's question?

THANK YOU!!

The coin flip was a prob of 1/2

so

(1/2)(x) = 12/40)
x = 24/40
= 12/20, I wanted 20 at the bottom since there are 20 marbles
so something 12 out of 20 ??

how about 3 white or 9 blacks

Pierre's question:
What is the probability of head and not a green marble, or
What is the probability of tails and not a green marble, or
what is the probability of tails and either a black or a white marble, or
(there is one more)

Pierre's question to Sherry was most likely:

"What is the theoretical probability of getting tails on a coin flip and drawing a white marble from a bag of marbles that contains 3 white marbles, 8 green marbles, and 9 black marbles?"

Sherry's correct answer was 12/40, which means there are 12 favorable outcomes out of a total of 40 possible outcomes.

Pierre's question to Sherry must have involved finding the theoretical probability of a compound event that involves both flipping a coin and drawing a marble from a bag. The information about the contents of the bag of marbles suggests that Pierre was concerned with the probability of selecting a particular color marble after flipping a coin.

To calculate the probability of a compound event, we first need to determine the probability of each individual event and then multiply them together. In this case, the two events are flipping a coin and drawing a marble.

The possible outcomes of flipping a coin are heads or tails, which means there is a 1/2 (or 0.5) probability for each outcome. Let's assume Pierre asked about the probability of getting heads on the coin flip.

Next, we have to consider the probability of choosing a specific color marble from the bag. The total number of marbles in the bag is 3 + 8 + 9 = 20. To find the probability of selecting a white marble, we divide the number of white marbles by the total number of marbles: 3/20.

Lastly, we multiply the probabilities of the two independent events together: (1/2) * (3/20) = 3/40. However, as Sherry's answer is 12/40, we can conclude that Pierre's question may have involved either flipping the coin twice or drawing two marbles from the bag.

Without further information, it's not possible to determine the specific question Pierre asked. However, based on the given answer, we can speculate that Pierre might have asked for the probability of getting heads on two consecutive coin flips or selecting white marbles twice in a row.