E.J. calls people at random to conduct a survey. So far $40$ calls have been answered and $120$ calls have not been answered. What is the approximate probability that someone answers the next call he makes? $\newline$ A. $(1)/(3)$ $\newline$ B. $0.4$ $\newline$ C. $0.25$ $\newline$ D. $75\%$ $\newline$ SUBMIT

Full solution

Q. E.J. calls people at random to conduct a survey. So far

40

calls have been answered and

120

calls have not been answered. What is the approximate probability that someone answers the next call he makes?

\newline

(1)/(3)

\newline

0.4

\newline

0.25

\newline

75\%

\newline

SUBMIT

Calculate Ratio: To find the probability that someone answers the next call, we need to look at the ratio of calls answered to total calls made so far.
Find Total Calls: The total number of calls made so far is the sum of calls answered and calls not answered. So, we have $40$ calls answered and $120$ calls not answered, which gives us a total of $40 + 120 = 160$ calls.
Calculate Probability: The probability that someone answers a call is the number of calls answered divided by the total number of calls. This gives us a probability of $\frac{40}{160}.$
Simplify Fraction: Simplifying the fraction $\frac{40}{160}$ , we divide both the numerator and the denominator by $40$ , which gives us $\frac{1}{4}$ .
Convert to Decimal: The fraction $\frac{1}{4}$ can be written as a decimal, which is $0.25$ . This is the approximate probability that someone answers the next call E.J. makes.