Skip to content

Standard deviation of the sum of two cards labelled 0 to 4

Question

There are two identical decks, each consisting of five cards marked 0,1,2,3,40,1,2,3,4. One card is drawn at random from each deck and the two values are added. What is the standard deviation of the total?

Short answer

22. Each card is uniform on {0,…,4}\{0,\dots,4\} with mean 22 and variance 0+1+4+9+165−4=2\tfrac{0+1+4+9+16}{5}-4=2. The draws are independent, so the total has variance 44 and standard deviation 22.

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

See the hint and the full worked solution in the question bank (free account).

Open the worked solution

Lessons behind this question

Start with a free lesson: Expectation, Variance and Covariance is part of a free topic. Create a free account, no card needed, to read it in full with worked solutions.

Read it free