Question

A carnival game has 160 rubber ducks floating in a pool. The person playing the game takes out one duck and looks at it.

If there’s a red mark on the bottom of the duck, the person wins a small prize.

If there’s a blue mark on the bottom of the duck, the person wins a large prize.

Many ducks do not have a mark.

After 50 people have played the game, only 3 of them have won a small prize, and none of them have won a large prize.

Estimate the number of the 160 ducks that you think have red marks on the bottom.

Answer 1

We can use the information provided to estimate the number of ducks that have red marks on the bottom.

If only 3 out of 50 people have won a small prize, then we can estimate that the probability of winning a small prize is 3/50 or 0.06. Since the person wins a small prize if there’s a red mark on the bottom of the duck, we can estimate that the proportion of ducks with red marks is also 0.06.

So, we can estimate the number of ducks with red marks as follows:

Number of ducks with red marks = 0.06 x 160

Number of ducks with red marks = 9.6

We can estimate that there are about 9 or 10 ducks with red marks on the bottom.