7. In a survey, 156 people indicated that they prefer cats, 59 indicated that they prefer dogs, and 61 indicated that they don't enjoy either pet. Find the probability that a randomly chosen person will prefer dogs.



Answer :

Let C and D be the set of people who prefer cats and dogs respectively.

According to the given problem,

[tex]\begin{gathered} n(C)=156 \\ n(D)=59 \\ n(none)=61 \end{gathered}[/tex]

Note that mathematically, you can prefer one thing at a time. That means that none of the surveyed people will prefer cat and dog both,

[tex]n(C\cap D)=0[/tex]

Then the total number of people surveyed is calculated as,

[tex]\begin{gathered} n(Total)=n(C)+n(D)+n(none) \\ n(Total)=156+59+61 \\ n(Total)=276 \end{gathered}[/tex]

The probability of an event is given by,

[tex]\text{ Probability}=\frac{\text{ Number of favorable outcomes}}{\text{ Total number of outcomes}}[/tex]

So the probability that a randomly chosen person will prefer dogs, is calculated as,

[tex]\begin{gathered} P(D)=\frac{n(D)}{n(Total)} \\ P(D)=\frac{59}{276} \end{gathered}[/tex]

Thus, the corresponding probability is,

[tex]\frac{59}{276}[/tex]