There are sweets in a bag. 6 of the sweets are orange and the rest are yellow. Hannah takes a random sweet and eats it. She then takes another sweet and eats it. The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is . Show that and find the total number of sweets .

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: A.

  1. Step 1: Write the probability equation for drawing two orange sweets without replacement: .
  2. Step 2: Equate to and cross-multiply: .
  3. Step 3: Factorise the quadratic equation: or . Since the count of sweets must be positive, .
Answer
.
Why not the others: is the rejected negative root's absolute value (); gives probability ; gives probability .

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