Race between a second five and seeing both four and six
Question
A fair die is rolled repeatedly and the results are recorded. Rolling stops at the first moment when either the value has appeared twice in total (not necessarily in a row), or both a and a have appeared at least once each. What is the probability that the stopping reason is the pair of s?
Short answer
. Ignore 1s, 2s and 3s: each relevant roll is a 4, 5 or 6 with probability , and repeating an already-seen 4 or 6 changes nothing. If the first relevant roll is a 5, the fives win with probability ; if it is a 4 or 6, they win with probability . Hence .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Random Variables and Probability Mass Functions
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
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