When you draw a card from a standard deck of 52 playing cards, you want to know the probability of drawing either a king or an ace. Let’s break this down.
A standard deck contains 4 kings (one for each suit: hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades) and 4 aces (also one for each suit). This gives us a total of:
- 4 kings
- 4 aces
Now, if we add those together, we have 4 + 4 = 8 favorable outcomes (the kings and aces).
To calculate the probability, we divide the number of favorable outcomes by the total number of possible outcomes. In this case, the total number of cards in the deck is 52. Therefore, the probability (P) can be calculated as follows:
P(drawing a king or an ace) = Number of favorable outcomes / Total outcomes
P = 8 / 52 which simplifies to P = 2 / 13.
So, the probability of drawing a king or an ace from a standard deck of cards is 2/13, or approximately 15.38%.