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Walker14
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From a standard 52-card deck, how many 7-card hands have exactly 5 spades and 2 hearts?
Walker14 said:From a standard 52-card deck, how many 7-card hands have exactly 5 spades and 2 hearts?
Jameson said:Hi Walker14,
Welcome to MHB! :)
What have you tried so far? With problems like this it is very useful to use combinations. You might have seen it written like this:
\(\displaystyle {n \choose k}\)
Prove It said:Hi Jameson, Walker14 is a student of mine. This problem came up during tutoring and I had a brain fart - unfortunately we couldn't figure out where to start, as there was so many variables to deal with - not only figuring out how many ways there are to get spades, but also how to arrange 5 of them, and then the same with hearts...
From a standard 52-card deck, how many 7-card hands
have exactly 5 spades and 2 hearts?
Opalg said:This had me in all sorts of trouble for a while, but I ended up realising that it is as simple as Jameson indicates. The number of arrangements is ${13 \choose 5}{13 \choose 2} = 100\,386$. In terms of probabilities, the chances of drawing such a hand from a 52-card pack are \(\displaystyle \frac{{13 \choose 5}{13 \choose 2}}{52\choose7} \approx 0.00075035565.\)
Jameson said:These kinds of problems are either this easy or incredibly tedious. I pretty much always feel doubt with which ever way I go and I know that if it's not just multiplying some combinations together then I better set aside an afternoon to and grab a lot of paper.
The formula for calculating the number of 7-card hands with 5 spades and 2 hearts is nCr * nCr, where n is the total number of cards in the deck (52) and r is the number of cards in the hand (7). In this case, it would be 13C5 * 13C2, which equals 1287 * 78 = 100,386 possible hands.
To calculate the probability of getting a hand with 5 spades and 2 hearts, you divide the number of possible hands with 5 spades and 2 hearts (100,386) by the total number of possible hands (133,784,560). This gives you a probability of approximately 0.000751% or 1 in 133,785.
Yes, it is possible to get a hand with all 5 spades and 2 hearts. This is known as a "flush" and has a probability of approximately 0.00116% or 1 in 86,884 hands.
The probability of getting a hand with 5 spades and 2 hearts is relatively low compared to other possible hands. For example, the probability of getting a straight (5 cards in sequential rank) is approximately 0.0039% or 1 in 25,829 hands, while the probability of getting a full house (3 cards of one rank and 2 cards of another rank) is approximately 0.1441% or 1 in 693 hands.
No, the order of the cards does not matter in a hand with 5 spades and 2 hearts. As long as the hand contains 5 spades and 2 hearts, it is considered a hand with 5 spades and 2 hearts regardless of the order the cards are in.