The given table shows the number of engineers with their years of experience for five engineering majors. If an engineer who has five or less years experience is chosen at random, which of the following is the probability that the chosen engineer will be an industrial engineer? Round your answer to the nearest hundredth. Is it A) 0.09, B) 0.62, C) 0.27, or D) 0.17?
We’re asked to consider those engineers who have five or less years of experience. This includes those engineers with zero to two years of experience and also three to five years’ experience. We need to calculate the probability that one of these engineers is an industrial engineer.
The probability of an event occurring can be written as a fraction: the number of successful outcomes over the number of possible outcomes, in this case, the number of successful outcomes of the industrial engineers who have zero to five years of experience. We need to add 6550 and 5120. This is equal to 11670. The number of possible outcomes is the total number of engineers with zero to five years of experience. We need to add 39075 and 30555. This gives us a total of 69630. The probability that the chosen engineer will be an industrial engineer is 11670 over 69630.
The line in a fraction means divide. Therefore, we can divide 11670 by 69630. Typing this into our calculator gives us 0.1676 and so on. We have been asked to round our answer to the nearest hundredth. This is the same as rounding to two decimal places. As the number after this is a seven, we will round up.
To the nearest hundredth, the probability is 0.17. We can, therefore, say that the correct answer is option D.