Restoring a six-digit house number after two digits fall
Question
A house displays the six digits in that order, i.e. the number . A storm knocks off two of the six digits, chosen uniformly at random among all pairs of positions. The owner, who has forgotten the number, puts the two fallen digits back into the two empty positions in a random order. What is the probability that the house again reads ?
Short answer
. Of the equally likely pairs, two (the two s or the two s) consist of equal digits and are always restored correctly; for the other pairs the owner is right half the time. So the probability is .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
- Continuous Random Variables and Probability Density Functions
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