Question

In Exercises 13–20, express the indicated degree of likelihood as a probability value between 0 and 1.

Testing If you make a random guess for the answer to a true/false test question, there is a 50–50 chance of being correct.

Short answer

The probability value for getting a correct answer (true/false) equals 0.5.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

For a true/false question, there is a 50-50 chance of getting the correct answer.

Discuss the concept of probability

Probability can be defined as the degree of likelihood for any arbitrary event.

For a given event A, the probability of A is computed using following formula:

$P\left(A\right)=\frac{\text{Number}\text{of}\text{outcomes}\text{in}\text{which}\text{A}\text{is}\text{likely}\text{to}\text{occur}}{\text{Total}\text{number}\text{of}\text{outcomes}}$

Calculating the probability value

Here,

the total number of possible answers equals 2; true or false.

The number of correct answers is equal to 1.

Since there are 50-50 chance for getting correct answers, the probability of getting a correct answer is equal equally likely; 50% (0.5) each.

Mathematically,

$$\begin{gathered} P\left(correctanswer\right)=\frac{\text{Number}\text{of}\text{correct}\text{answers}}{\text{Total}\text{number}\text{of}\text{answers}} \\ =\frac{1}{2} \\ =0.5 \end{gathered}$$

Therefore, the probability of getting a correct answer is equal to 0.5.