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Painted small cube showing red twice

Question

A 3×3×33\times3\times3 cube is painted red on all its outside faces and then sliced into 2727 unit cubes. You pick one unit cube at random and roll it twice like a die; both times the face on top is red. What is the probability you picked one of the corner cubes?

Short answer

47\tfrac47. By Bayes, weight each type by its count times the chance of two red rolls: corners 8⋅(36)2=28\cdot(\tfrac36)^2=2, edges 12⋅(26)2=4312\cdot(\tfrac26)^2=\tfrac43, face centres 6⋅(16)2=166\cdot(\tfrac16)^2=\tfrac16, and the centre cube 00. The posterior is 2/(2+43+16)=472\big/\big(2+\tfrac43+\tfrac16\big)=\tfrac47.

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

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