Question

Penicillin “Who discovered penicillin: Sean Penn, William Penn, Penn Jillette, Alexander Fleming, or Louis Pasteur?” If you make a random guess for the answer to that question, what is the probability that your answer is the correct answer of Alexander Fleming?

Short answer

The probability that the answer is correct (Alexander Fleming) is 0.2.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

The names of five persons are given.

Of these, Alexander Fleming is the discoverer of Penicillin.

Describe the idea of probability

Probability is the likelihood that a particular event will occur.

For any arbitrary event E, it is calculated using the formula

$P\left(E\right)=\frac{\text{Number}\text{of}\text{favourable}\text{outcomes}}{\text{Total}\text{number}\text{of}\text{outcomes}}$

Compute the probability

Let F be the event of getting the correct answer to the question on random guess.

Here, the total number of choices for the answer is 5.

And the number of correct answers is 1.

The probability of choosing the correct answer is

$$\begin{gathered} P\left(F\right)=\frac{\text{Number}\text{of}\text{correct} \text{answers}}{\text{Total} \text{number}\text{of}\text{answers}} \\ =\frac{1}{5} \\ =0.2 \end{gathered}$$

Therefore, the probability of getting the correct answer (Alexander Fleming) is 0.2.