Astudy conducted on 40,000 words in the english language found that about 6,670 words started with the letter t, which is the most common letter to start a word. if we randomly pick 20 unique words, which of these lists of words will come closest to the theoretical probability of getting a word beginning with t?

To answer this problem, first let us calculate for the theoretical probability obtained from the study conducted:

Theoretical Probability = 6,670 / 40,000

Theoretical Probability = 0.16675 = 0.17

From the given choices, the list of words which can give this similar amount of probability is:

“to, sarcastic, epithet, for, less, corruptible, than, the, offspring, open, any, primary, loyalty, table, out, whom, example, who, mention, say”

In this set of words, the number of words starting with letter T is 4. Calculating for the probability of getting a word starting with T in this set is:

Sample probability = 4 / 20

Sample probability = 0.20

the slope of the first function is -3. (3/1)

the slope of the second function is 1. (13-10/6-3).

since |-3| is greater than |1|, the function with the steepest slope is the first.