ShmoopTube

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Here's a shmoopy question for you...

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There is a crisis at Sesame Street.

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The residents there are in urgent need of 2 letters.

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According to the laws of the land, those letters must be chosen at random from an alphabet

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set consisting of both upper- and lowercase letters.

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If, on the first random draw, the letter capital 'E' was chosen and eliminated from the Cookie

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Monster's garbage can of available letters... ...what is the probability that, on the second

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draw, a vowel will be chosen?

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Assume the letters 'y' and 'Y' are consonants...

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And here are the potential answers:

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Life may look easy on the Street but it isn't always.

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The puppets there wrestle with big ideas. And sometimes with each other.

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So what is this question really asking? It's a probability question with a twist on the

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total set of possible choices.

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The basic alphabet has 26 letters -- but the twist is that this problem treats capital

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letters different from small letters...

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...kinda like fancy computer password log ins these days.

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So there are 52 total choices of letters in the mega set of possibilities.

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To now get to the answer, we have to assess the "damage" given by the other twists

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the problem throws at us.

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First of all, the capital E is removed -- it's a vowel and it's also one of the 52 choices.

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So now we know the denominator has to have 51 in it, not 52.

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We know that there are 5 vowels in the alphabet -- but there are 10 choices if we can count

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both a capital and a small letter. And we have removed a capital E from the possible

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picks moving forward.

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So there are just 9 vowels left as possible

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picks over the total set of 51... ... so our answer is 9 over 51. Choice C.

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Or should that be... choice... lowercase c? Uh oh, we're feeling overwhelmed...

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Where's Elmo when you need him?

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