Smallest square-valued bank of easy and medium items
Question
A puzzle writer keeps a stock of easy and medium questions. Every easy one is valued at $3 and every medium one at $6. When one question is drawn uniformly at random from the stock, it is medium with probability . The combined value of the entire stock, in dollars, is a perfect square. What is the least that total can be?
Short answer
$225. The medium probability of forces three easy questions per medium one, so the stock splits into blocks worth dollars. We need the least with a perfect square, which is , giving .
Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
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