When the basketball practice ends, Audrey comes to the room where Pablo and his teammates have been studying for Algebra II. Not only did the footballers go over the long questions that they used, but they also answered a few sample multiple-choice questions in ACT style on probability and statistics.
"Thank you, Pablo. Now we have a better idea of what we need to work on" a grateful Ethan then walks away, with a string of multiple-choice answers and the test's long questions on hand.
Pablo then turns in Finn's direction. "If I may, don't look at the solutions without attempting the problem yourself first!"
"Oh..." a surprised Finn then rushes to the exit, and then kisses Carrie when he gets to her. "Good luck, Pablo, for this... quiz bowl tournament!"
Pablo then blushes. "For once that you have been nice to me about quiz bowl!"
Audrey arrives as Finn and the other football players leave. "Speaking of quiz bowl, some of our teammates are already at my place. Namely, Gerard and Nadine"
The juniors on the quiz bowl team are much more preoccupied with studying for the ACT, and they do so at Myriam's place, Audrey muses while she picks up Carrie alongside Pablo. He knew Carrie in passing, but he never interacted much with her. Maybe in the weight room sometimes but no more than that.
When the trio arrives at Audrey's home, they are arrayed in the dining room, ready to tackle sample probability and statistics questions.
"Carrie, here are some questions from past years' tests on the topic of your test on Monday" Pablo shows her the long questions of the Algebra II test, knowing that Ethan, Finn et al tucked away the answers to the multiple-choice questions.
The first question is about the odds of winning a lottery. However, they don't realize they are solving for a real lottery.
"OK, if we have a six-digit combination that wins you the jackpot, drawn out of forty-nine digits, what's the probability of winning the jackpot?" Pablo asks Carrie about the odds.
"Are the digits drawn with or without return?" a confused Carrie rolls her eyes.
"Did you ever see anyone play a lottery, or a lottery being drawn?" Audrey asks Carrie in hopes of getting her on track to answer.
"No? My parents might have played, but they never showed me the tickets!" a confused Carrie starts wondering what lottery tickets even look like.
Pablo then looks up a ticket for the lottery in the question on his phone. He shows the blank ticket to Carrie:
"This is the ticket of the lottery in the question. To play the lottery, you need to pick six digits, but can you pick the same digit more than once?" he asks her.
"No?" Carrie answers, her tone of voice leaving traces of her insecurity.
"So now you know where to start!" Audrey's eyes are now turned to Carrie's screen.
Carrie starts multiplying what she feels are probabilities of a certain digit being on her ticket. So her worksheet shows 1/49 times 1/48, and so on until all six digits are accounted for. At the end of this stage, she checks her answer against the solution.
"Ouch! My answer is far lower than the solution!" Carrie starts wondering what went wrong in solving the problem.
"There are two questions you should be asking when solving probability problems with combinations. Pablo only hinted at one of the two questions, the other being whether the order of items in a combination is important. Does it matter in which order the digits are drawn?" Audrey's patience nosedives.
YOU ARE READING
Can't Stop the Questions
RomancePablo, a sophomore playing tight end for Venomous Agendas High, plays the best football game of his life, but as the season comes to a close, his coaches tell him he can't rely on football to go to college, forcing him to buckle down on academics fo...
