GENERAL RULE

A general rule is to subtract the probabilities with an even number of components inside the parentheses and add those with an odd number of components (one or three) to arrive at the probability of events.

Example

Consider a bag containing 4 white and 5 black balls. A man draws 3 balls at random; let us see what is the probability that all three are black?

The total number of ways in which 3 balls can be drawn is 9C3and the number of ways of drawing 3 black balls is 5C₃therefore the probability of drawing 3 black balls is given by

P(All three are black)