Question

Bob and Alice each have a bag that contains one ball of each of the colors blue, green, orange, red, and violet. Alice randomly selects one ball from her bag and puts it into Bob's bag. Bob then randomly selects one ball from his bag and puts it into Alice's bag. What is the probability that after this process the contents of the two bags are the same?

$\dfrac{1}{10}$

$\dfrac{1}{6}$

$\dfrac{1}{5}$

$\dfrac{1}{3}$

$\dfrac{1}{2}$

Solution:

Alice moves one ball to Bob, so Bob's bag holds $6$ balls with exactly one color appearing twice.

The two bags end up identical exactly when Bob returns one of that duplicated pair. Two of the six balls qualify, so the probability is $\tfrac26=\tfrac13.$

Thus, the correct answer is D.

2006 AMC 10B Problem 17

Solution:

Problem 17 in Other Years