Question

On an airplane, there are two window seats, 2 aisle seats, and 1 middle seats per row (each row sits 3 people on one side of the aisle and 2 people on the opposite side). 2 friends have requested to be seated in the same row. What is the probability that both friends will be assigned to aisle seats?

Can anyone tell me, how many total seat is it talking about in this problem?

Answer 1

The total number of seats in a row = 5

Lets suppose you are standing in front of the row, so you have 3 seats on one side of you then the passage of the plane and 2 seats on the other side. Out of 3 seats, 1 is window, 1 is middle and 1 is aisle. Similarly, out of the 2 seats on the other side, 1 is the window and 1 is aisle seat, Hence, a total of 5 seats.

As 2 friends have requested to be seated in the same row. So probability of them getting aisle seats becomes 2/5 for 1st friend (as there are 2 aisle seats out of 5 seats) and 1/4 (1 seat is already allocated to the friend so only 1 aisle seat is left out of 4 seats) for the second one.

So, joint probability becomes =
`(2)/(5)*(1)/(4)= (1)/(10)`

or probability becomes 0.1