se the table to answer the question.

Question

This table shows the number of seedlings for each plant type (A, B, C, D, and E).
Plant Types A B C D E
Number of Seedlings 100 140 80 60 40
A farmer conducted an inventory on his two square kilometers of rainforest; the results are in the table. He plans on randomly selecting a seedling to experiment on when he goes back to the forest. What is the probability that he will randomly pick a type  B
 plant? Write your answer in the simplest form of a fraction

Answer 1

To find the probability of selecting a type B plant seedling, you first need to determine the total number of seedlings and then the number of type B seedlings.

From the table:

• Number of type A seedlings: 100
• Number of type B seedlings: 140
• Number of type C seedlings: 80
• Number of type D seedlings: 60
• Number of type E seedlings: 40

Now, let's calculate the total number of seedlings:

\[ \text{Total seedlings} = 100 + 140 + 80 + 60 + 40 = 420 \]

Now that we know there are 420 seedlings in total, we can find the probability of selecting a type B seedling. The probability \( P \) of selecting type B is given by the formula:

\[ P(\text{B}) = \frac{\text{Number of B seedlings}}{\text{Total number of seedlings}} = \frac{140}{420} \]

Next, simplify the fraction:

\[ \frac{140}{420} = \frac{1}{3} \]

Thus, the probability of randomly picking a type B plant seedling is:

\[ \boxed{\frac{1}{3}} \]