Timothy and Urban play a game with two dice. But they do not use the numbers. Some of the faces are painted red and the others blue. Each player throws the dice in turn. Timothy wins when the two top faces are the same color. Urban wins when the colors are different. Their chances are even.

The first die has 5 red faces and 1 blue face. How many red and how many blue are there on the second die?

A die has 6 faces. When two dice are thrown, there are 36 equally possible results. For chances to be even, there must be 18 ways of getting the same color on top. Let X be the number of red faces on the second die. We have: 18 = 5X + 1(6 - X) X = 3 The second die must have 3 red faces and 3 blue faces.

Posted by kevin on 2005-10-29 20:08:22