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Looking Glass Ventures.

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ISBN: 978-1-944931-02-5

Note To Reader
Welcome to this little Zen Masters
guide on Probability, the second
problem-solving book in our Zen series
for middle-school students. As with all
our texts in this series, our goal is to
simply unveil the joys and delights of
this mathematical topic, to provide
context and make sense of the details,
and help set you on a path of
mathematical mastery and clever
problem-solving.
This title is of help and interest to
students and educators alike. As with
all the titles in the Zen Masters series,
this Probability guide is an eBook with a
matching online course at
http://edfinity.com/ZenSeries/Probability

(effective June 1, 2016).

So feel free to browse through this

guide casually as a book on a digital
device, or to work through its details as
a focused, auto-graded course -- or
both!
All the details one needs to know about
Probability are here in this book,
explained naturally and swiftly, along
with a robust compilation of practice
problems. The more you try solving
problems, the more confident youll
become at them -- youll even start to
notice recurring ideas and approaches
which you can then use to your
advantage. If you havent already, be
sure to read 8 Tips to Conquer Any
Problem in our Zen Masters series.
This is the must-read introduction to
building your problem-solving skills. In
fact, this guide is going to assume you

are familiar with the strategies and

advice we go through there.
Okay! Without further ado, lets get
started!

James Tanton
March 2016

Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks and appreciation to
Michael Pearson, Executive Director of
the Mathematical Association of
America, for setting me on the path of
joyous mathematical problem solving
with the MAA Curriculum Inspirations
project, and to Shivram Venkat at
Edfinity for inviting me to extend that
wonderful work to the global community
of younger budding mathematicians. I
am so very honored to be part of the
unique, and truly remarkable, digital
format experience Shivram and Edfinity
have developed for the world.

James Tanton
January 2016

Edfinitys Zen Masters Series

Edfinitys Zen Masters series is a
collection of 11 digital titles (6 for
Middle School and 5 for High School)
created for the modern educator and
student. The titles are available only in
digital form and consist of carefully
crafted problem collections designed to
help students master problem solving.
Each title guides students through the
themes of a specific topic (such as
Algebra or Probability), presenting
concise expository content, select
examples illustrating specific problem
solving techniques, and between 150200 problems expertly arranged to help
the user achieve complete mastery.
The volumes are each accompanied
with optional access to an Edfinity
digital companion presenting all the

problems in the title as a self-paced,

online course with auto-grading and
performance analysis. Educators may
enroll their students to track their
progress, or students/parents may
enroll individually. Access to the guides
provides educators access to rich,
supplemental problem collections for
classroom use.
The Zen Masters Series is designed to
serve broad usage by educators and
students alike, offering substantive
general enrichment, development of
foundational skills in problem solving,
and contest preparation. In addition to
helping students prepare effectively for
local and major international contests,
the problems provide robust attention to
standards and guidelines of the
Common Core State Standards in

Mathematics (USA), GCSE (UK),

Singapores Math curriculum,
Australian Curriculum, and most other
international syllabi.

ZEN MASTERS MIDDLE SCHOOL

SERIES
8 Tips to Solve Any Problem, by James
Tanton
Counting and Probability, by James
Tanton
Numbers and the Number System, by
James Tanton
Structure, Patterns and Logic, by
James Tanton
Relationships and Equations, by James
Tanton
Geometry, by James Tanton
Solutions Manual for each title by
James Tanton

ZEN MASTERS HIGH SCHOOL SERIES

Algebra, by David Wells
Geometry, by David Wells
Number Theory, by David Wells
Discrete Mathematics, by David Wells
Advanced Topics, by David Wells
Solutions Manual for each title by David
Wells
Enroll at
http://edfinity.com/ZenSeries/Probability
(effective June 1, 2016) for online
practice with scoring and complete
solutions.

1. Counting Set Sizes

BASIC JARGON
A set is a collection of things.
These things can be real things:
The set of all stuffed animals in
my bedroom right now.
The set of all people on the world
with exactly 257,340 hairs on their
head.
Or they could be abstract things that
exist in our minds:
The set of all even numbers.
The set of all words that rhyme
with house.
People usually describe a particular set
just in words, like we have done in the
four examples above, but sometimes
they like to list the elements of the set
explicitly if it is easy to do.

It has become the convention to use

curly brackets, { and } ,when you do this.
For example,

{red,blue,orange} is the set of the

three colors red, blue, and orange.
{A,B,C ,,Y ,Z } is the set of capital
letters in the English alphabet.
{2,4,6,8,....} is the set of even whole
numbers.
COMMENT: NOTICE HOW THE DOTS ARE
USED TO MEAN KEEP DOING THE OBVIOUS
THING.

The order in which one lists elements of

a set is considered unimportant. For
example, {red,blue,orange} and
{blue,red,orange} and {orange,red,blue} , and
so on, all represent the same set.

Question: Would you want to list the

elements of the set {2,4,6,8,....} in a
different order?

Also, it is assumed that one doesnt

repeat the elements in the set. For
example, writing
{red,red,red,blue,blue,orange,orange,orange,

orange,orange}

would be considered strange and

people wouldnt know what to make of
it.
The size of a set is the number of
things in it. This can sometimes be a bit
tricky to think about.

The set {red,blue,orange} has size 3.

The set of capital letters in the
English alphabet has size 26 .
The set of all even whole numbers
is infinite.
The set of all people with brown
hair who can sit at the bottom of
the ocean for an hour while
holding their breath is zero.

Sometimes people dont even know the

size of some sets!

Consider the set of all multiples of

six that are both one more and
one less than a prime number.
(Twelve, for example, is one such
multiple of six. So is eighteen.) No
one on this planet currently knows
the size of this set. (Most
mathematicians suspect it is
infinite, but they dont know for
sure.)

One could draw a diagram represent a

set. People usually draw circles to
represent a set, but a blob of any shape
is fine. For example, this set shows the
number of my friends who like math, 120
of them, and the number who dont,
just 3. (What is wrong with those
people?)

Often people like to denote sets with

symbols, usually, but not always,
capital letters.
For example, someone might say:

Let E denote the set of all even

whole numbers. (So E = {2,4,6,8,...} .)
or
Call the set of people with two arms
and the set of all people with three
P2
arms P3 .

The symbol used to denote a particular

set isnt important (although it is nice to
choose a symbol that seems helpful for
remembering what the set is).

By the way each thing in a set is

called an element of the set.
For example, 16 is an element of the
set of even numbers, and I am an
element of the set of people with brown
hair.
Problems 1,2 - solve on Edfinity.

TECHNICAL STUFF: UNIONS AND

INTERSECTIONS

The language and notation here gets

fancy. Well explain the language
through an example.
Let H be the set of all people with
brown hair.
Let E be the set of all people with
brown eyes.
The union of two sets is the set of all
objects that belong to at least one of
the sets. The symbol is used to
denote union.
H E is the set of all people who

either have brown hair, or have blue

eyes, or both.
The intersection of two sets is the set of
all objects that belong to both sets. The
symbol is used to denote
intersection.

H E is the set of all people with

both brown hair and brown eyes.

This picture represents the set of
brown-haired people and the set of
brown-eyed people.

Beatrice, who happens to have brown

hair, but not brown eyes, is represented
as a dot sitting inside the blob marked
H but not inside the blob marked E.

Jin-Pyo, who happens to have both

brown hair and brown eyes, is
represented by a dot that lies inside
both blobs.
Arman has red hair and blue eyes and
is represented by a dot outside both
blobs.
The union and the intersection of H and
E is represented by those points that lie
in the shaded regions shown.

Sets need not intersect:

The set of all even whole numbers
and the set of all whole numbers

that end with 5 have no elements

in common.
The set of all cows and the set of
all planets in the solar system do
not intersect.
The sets {A,B,C } and {D,E ,F } do not
intersect.
Sets that do not intersect might be
depicted as follows:

Comment: It is possible for two sets P

and Q to satisfy P Q = Q . Sets arrange
as shown below have this property.

An example of two sets like this could

be:
P = the set of all people who have
ever opened a math book.
Q = the set of people who have
opened this book.
In this picture we also have P Q = P .

Problem 3 - solve on Edfinity.

SIZES OF UNIONS AND INTERSECTIONS

In a class of 20 students, 10 have a pet

cat, 8 have a pet dog, and 5 have both.
Heres a diagram that shows this
information and more!

Do you see that 10 students do indeed

have a pet cat? Do you see that 8 have
a pet dog?
We also see that 3 students have a dog
but not a cat, and that 5 students have
a cat but not a dog. Also, a total of 13
students own at least one pet of the
types we are considering.

Warning: 10 students
Warning!
have a cat, 8 have a
dog. It is tempting to
say then that 10+ 8 = 18 students own at
least one pet, which is not 13 ! Do you
see the trouble with this? In the sum
10+ 8 = 18 those people that own both a
cat and a dog got counted twice: once
as a cat owner and once as a dog
owner. This means that the number 18
is too big (which we know it is!)

WARNING:

WATCH OUT FOR THE PEOPLE IN

THE INTERSECTION OF TWO SETS. THEY CAN
MAKE ADDING THE NUMBERS CORRECTLY A BIT
TRICKY.

Heres a more general situation.

Consider two sets P and Q :

The number a is the number of

elements that are in P but outside of Q ,
b is the number of elements that belong
to both P and Q , and c is the number of
elements that are in Q but outside of P .
Some questions:
If b = 0 , what is happening? (Look
at the diagram again.)
This means that that there are no
elements in the intersection of the two
sets and the picture should be more
like:

If c = 0 , what is happening?
In this case there are no elements in Q
that dont belong to P . The picture
should be more like:

If a = 0 , what is happening?
In this case there are no elements in P
that dont belong to Q . The picture
should be:

What is the meaning of the

number a + b ?
This is the total number of element of
P . It is the size of P .
What is the meaning of the
number b + c ?
This is the size of Q .
What is the meaning of the
number a + b + c ?
This is the size of P Q , the union.
Now things can get tricky!

EXAMPLE: A set P has 10 elements and a

set Q has 8 elements. If their union has 12
elements, how many elements belong to
both P and Q ?
Answer: If we look at the general
picture:

We are being told:

And

a + b = 10
b + c = 8
a + b + c = 12.

But algebra is too hard!

There are 12 elements in total, and

P has 10 of them.
It must be that c = 2 .
Since Q has 8 elements and c = 2 ,
we must have b = 6 .
There are 6 elements in the
intersection.
MATH STRATEGY: Some people like
to notice the following relationship.
Look again at the picture:

We have:

( )
size Q = b + c
( )

size P = a + b

So

( )

()

size P + size Q = a + b + b + c .

But a + b + c = size ( P Q ) and theres an

extra b , which is size ( P Q ) .

( )

()

size P + size Q = size P Q + size P Q

Tip
Some people memorize
this formula to answer
questions about sizes of unions and
intersections. I personally dont! Id
rather look at the picture and then nut
my way through the mathematics, just
like we did in the previous examples.

SUBSETS
One final piece:
By a subset of a set A we mean
another set all of whose elements, if
there are any, already belong to A .
For example, if A = {a,b,c,d,e} , then {a,c,d}
and {e} are subsets. So are {a,b,c,d,e} ,
the whole set itself, and {} ,the set with
nothing in it. (Read the definition again
carefully!) These last two examples are
a bit weird and are sometimes called
improper subsets. All other subsets,
with at least one element, and not
containing everything, are called proper
subsets.
If B is a subset of A , we might write:
B A . The picture that goes with this
situation is:

Problems 4-10 -solve on Edfinity.