Question

You're having dinner at a restaurant that serves

5
kinds of pasta (spaghetti, bow ties, fettuccine, ravioli, and macaroni) in
4
different flavors (tomato sauce, cheese sauce, meat sauce, and olive oil).
If you randomly pick your kind of pasta and flavor, what is the probability that you'll end up with bow ties, cheese sauce, or both?

Answer 1

2/5

Explanation:

Answer 2

Bow ties: 1/5

Cheese sauce: 1/4

Bow ties with cheese sauce: 1/20

Explanation:

There are 3 different questions here.

First, you have the pasta question. What is the probability you'll end up with bow ties? Well, there are 5 kinds of pasta, all with the same chance to be chosen... so you have 1 chance out of 5 to pick bow ties.

Then the sauce. Same logic... 4 different sauces... so 1/4 chance to get the cheese sauce.

For the bow ties and cheese sauce combo, it's a bit different, we're talking about compound probabilities here.

So, you have to multiply the probability to get bow ties with the probability to get cheese sauce, so:

`(1)/(5) * (1)/(4) = (1)/(20)`