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'Chances Are' printed from https://nrich.maths.org/
Rajeev from Fair Field School sent us the
following solution:
I found that your best chance of winning was the option of tossing
the coin and the chance of winning was $\frac{1}{4096}$.
Here is how I worked it out:
- You win first prize if you can toss a fair coin and get 12
heads in a row. With one coin toss, you get half a chance, with 2
coin tosses you get $\frac{1}{4}$ and with 3 you get $\frac{1}{8}$
so with 12 coin tosses you get$(\frac{1}{2})^{12}$ which is
$\frac{1}{4096}$
- Throw 5 fair dice and you get 5 sixes and you win the first
prize. With 1 fair die your chance of getting a six is
$\frac{1}{6}$ and with 2 its $\frac{1}{36}$ so with 5 fair dice its
$(\frac{1}{6})^5$ which is $\frac{1}{7776}$
- Choose the top 4 from 10 famous pictures and put them in the
right order to win. $\frac{1}{5040}$
- Our resident Gardener has listed her seven favourite plants in
order. If you can match the order you win. With 2 there are 2 ways
of ordering, with 3 it is 6 and with 4 it is 24 and so with 7 it is
$7\times6\times5\times4\times3\times2\times1)=5040$ So the
probability of selecting the correct ordering is
$\frac{1}{5040}$
- You toss four ten-sided dice and win the first prize if you can
get 4 sixes. With one die it's $\frac{1}{10}$ and with 2 dice it's
$\frac{1}{100}$ and with 4 dice it is $\frac{1}{10000}$
Christian from Takeley explains how to
calculate the probability for number 3:
The game which involves the ten famous pictures. You work out
the probability of putting the right picture first, which is one
tenth. You then work out the probability of getting the right
picture and putting it into the second place, which is one ninth.
You continue in this way until you have all four individual
probabilities. You then multiply them all together: one tenth, one
ninth, one eight and one seventh, to get your final answer. The
probability is $\frac{1}{5040}$, which by coincidence is the same
probability as in the gardener game.
Well done too to Patrick from
Woodbridge School and Yash from Natomas Charter School who sent in
largely complete solutions to this problem. Yash
commented:
Since all the numerators are the same, the greatest
probability would be have to be the least denominator. Thus you'd
be best off tossing a coin 12 times, but it's probably not
as much fun.
And Patrick pointed out:
Thus, the best deal seems to be the twelve heads in a row -
which is so unlikely that it would be better to buy that bottle of
water instead!