There is a shelf in the library for the books by authors with the last names of Amster, Anderson, Axelson, Bannister, Baxter, and Bayer. The following table shows the number of books that the library has by these authors and how many of those books are currently checked out.
Author's Last Name, Number of books the library has, Number of books checked out
1. Amster, 8, 2
2. Anderson, 12, 3
3. Axelson, 1, 0
4. Bannister, 5, 2
5. Baxter, 4, 1
6. Bayer, 7, 1
If Robert randomly selects one book from the remaining books on the shelf, what is the probability that the author of the book he selects will be Baxter?
There are 28 books on the shelves, and only 3 by Baxter ...
What is the answer?
To find the probability that Robert will select a book by Baxter, we need to calculate the ratio of the number of Baxter's books to the total number of remaining books on the shelf.
To do this, we need to subtract the number of checked out books from the total number of books for each author. Looking at the table, we can see that for Baxter, there are 4 books in total and 1 book has been checked out. So, the number of remaining books by Baxter is 4 - 1 = 3.
Now, we need to calculate the total number of remaining books on the shelf. This can be done by subtracting the total number of checked out books from the total number of books for all authors. Summing up the checked out books for all authors, we have:
2 + 3 + 0 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 9 checked out books.
To find the total number of remaining books, we subtract the checked out books from the total number of books for all authors:
8 + 12 + 1 + 5 + 4 + 7 - 9 = 28 remaining books.
Finally, we calculate the probability of selecting a book by Baxter by dividing the number of Baxter's books by the total number of remaining books:
P(selecting Baxter's book) = 3 / 28.
Therefore, the probability that Robert will select a book by Baxter is 3/28.