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Expected top rank among four dealt cards

Question

Four cards are dealt from a well-shuffled standard deck. Counting aces as 11, number cards at face value, jacks as 1111, queens as 1212 and kings as 1313, what is the expected value of the highest of the four cards, to two decimal places?

Short answer

≈10.95\approx 10.95 (exactly 325772975\tfrac{32577}{2975}). The maximum is at most kk exactly when all four cards come from the 4k4k cards of rank ≤k\le k, so P(max⁡≤k)=(4k4)/(524)\mathbb{P}(\max\le k)=\binom{4k}{4}/\binom{52}{4}. Then E[max⁡]=∑k=012(1−P(max⁡≤k))\mathbb{E}[\max]=\sum_{k=0}^{12}\left(1-\mathbb{P}(\max\le k)\right).

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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