Reroll for the sum but pay if it reaches seven
Question
Roll a fair six-sided die. You may stop and collect the number shown in dollars. Or you may roll a second time: if the two rolls total or more, you must pay out an amount equal to your first roll; if the total is or less, you collect the total in dollars. With optimal decisions, what is your expected payout?
Short answer
dollars. Rolling again after a is worth and after a is worth , but after a it is worth only , and it gets worse for higher rolls. So reroll only on or : .
Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Expectation and Variance Revisited
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
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