missy and missy are messy sisters. their dresser drawer consists of 43 white socks, 2 black socks, 23 blue socks and 8 red socks. What is the minimum number of socks they must remove from the drawer to be certain they have four socks of the same color?
To determine the minimum number of socks Missy and Missy must remove from the drawer to be certain they have four socks of the same color, we need to consider the worst-case scenario.
In this case, we want to find the minimum number of socks to be certain that they have four socks of the same color. Therefore, we need to find the color with the fewest number of socks initially in the drawer.
Among the given colors (white, black, blue, and red), we can see that there are only 2 black socks, which is the smallest quantity. Therefore, to be certain they have four socks of the same color, they must remove 3 black socks from the drawer.
Hence, the minimum number of socks they must remove from the drawer is 3 in order to have four socks of the same color.