Average card value when hearts count double
Question
Give each card in a standard 52-card deck its rank as a value (ace , numbers at face value, jack , queen , king ), except that every heart is worth twice its rank (so the ace of hearts is worth ). If one card is drawn uniformly at random, what is its expected value?
Short answer
. Each suit's ranks sum to , and hearts count twice, so the deck totals . Dividing by cards gives .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
- Conditional Expectation and Variance Revisited
- Continuous Random Variables and Probability Density Functions
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