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Painted cube piece showing five blank faces

Question

The outside of a 3×3×33\times3\times3 cube is painted blue, and the cube is then sliced into 2727 unit cubes. One unit cube is chosen at random and placed so that you can see 55 of its faces at random (one face hidden), and all five visible faces are unpainted. Given this, what is the probability that the chosen cube has exactly one painted face?

Short answer

12\tfrac12. Only the centre cube (no paint) or one of the 6 face-centre cubes (one painted face, hidden with chance 16\tfrac16) can show five blank faces. Bayes gives 6⋅161⋅1+6⋅16=12\dfrac{6\cdot\tfrac16}{1\cdot1+6\cdot\tfrac16}=\tfrac12.

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

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