A coin is tossed 16 times. What is the probability of obtaining exactly 14 heads?
1 Answer
Explanation:
When calculating a probability, we take the ratio of the number of ways to meet a certain condition (i.e. the numerator) divided by the number of ways to pick from a pool (i.e. the denominator).
So what are the number of ways the flip of a coin 16 times can come out? Each toss has two possible results - if we toss twice we have 4
Of those results, how many ways can we achieve 14 heads in 16 tosses?
This is a combinations calculation, with the general formula:
And so we have: