Problema Solution

Sicily is playing a game where she is trying to guess the four digits in her friend's locker code, in any order. The digits range from 1 to 20, and none of the digits are repeated. If Sicily makes 6 guesses, what is the probability that she will make a winning guess?

Answer provided by our tutors

A formula for the number of possible permutations of k objects from a set of n is nPk = n!/(n - k)!


in our case n = 20 and k = 4


20P4 = 20!/(20 - 4)! = 20!/16! = 17*18*19*20 is the total number of possible guesses


since Sicily makes 6 guesses the probability is


p = 6/(17*18*19*20)


p = 1/19380


p = 0.0000515996 or 0.0052%