Skip to content

Mean painted faces on a unit cube from a 10x20x30 block

Question

A solid 10×20×3010\times20\times30 block has its outer surface painted red and is then sliced into 60006000 unit cubes. One unit cube is chosen uniformly at random. What is its expected number of red faces?

Short answer

11/3011/30. Every unit of painted surface sits on exactly one small cube, so the total number of red faces equals the surface area 2(200+600+300)=22002(200+600+300)=2200. Dividing by 60006000 cubes gives 1130\tfrac{11}{30}.

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

See the hint and the full worked solution in the question bank (free account).

Open the worked solution

Lessons behind this question

Start with a free lesson: Expectation, Variance and Covariance is part of a free topic. Create a free account, no card needed, to read it in full with worked solutions.

Read it free