In a statistics class there are 11 juniors and 6 seniors; 2 of the seniors are females; 6 of the juniors are males. if a student is selected at random, what is the probability that the student is either a junior or a female?

enter your answer as a fully reduced fraction.

The probability is 8/17.

The tricky portion of this question is the phrasing using the word "or".

The fact that it is looking for either a female "or" a junior, let's us know that the selection can't be both. In mathematics, we would need the term "and/or" in order to include those that are both.

So, given that information, we know we have 11 juniors, 6 of which are males and 5 of which are females. We would include the males in our selection.

We also know there are 6 seniors, 2 of which are female and 4 of which are males. We would include the 2 females.

This would give us a selection size of 8. There are 17 total kids, so we divide the 8 by 17 for the answer of 8/17.