Pat, Nick, Carlos, Joe, and Tina are working late on the student yearbook and decide to order sandwiches. Because the deli does not deliver, one of them will have to pick up their order. They decide to draw straws, and whoever gets the shortest straw will go to the deli.
A. If there is one straw per person, what is the theoretical probability (as a decimal) that Pat will have to get the food?
B. What equation did you use to determine this answer?
C. Show your work or explain in words how you determined your answer.
Please help me!

You can use the fact that there are 5 persons and there is one straw per person.
The probability that Pat will have to get the food is 1/5 = 0.2

How to find the theoretical probability of picking the shortest straw?

Since there are 5 friends and for each person there is a straw, thus, there are 5 straws.

Out of 5 straw, only one of the straw is shortest.

One straw out of 5 straws can be taken out in [tex]^5C_1 = 5[/tex] ways.

Theoretically, if Pat will have to go to get the food, it means Pat picked the shortest straw. There is only 1 way to choose shortest straw as there is only 1 shortest straw.

Let the event be E = event that Pat picks the shortest straw

Then,

[tex]P(E) = \dfrac{\text{Number of favorable cases to E}}{\text{Number of total cases}} = \dfrac{1}{5} = 0.2[/tex]

(We made few assumptions here.

1. There is only 1 shortest straw and all other are bigger than that.

2. Each person can pick any of 5 straw and selection is done instantaneously(which is sort of unreal) )

Thus,

The probability that Pat will have to get the food is 1/5 = 0.2

Learn more about probability here:

brainly.com/question/1210781