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The Game of Keno (Posted on 2022-07-12) Difficulty: 3 of 5
In the game of Keno, a player bets $1 on precisely five of the numbers from 1 to 80 inclusively. A machine draws at random precisely 20 of the numbers from 1 to 80 inclusively.

Between the player's numbers and the machine's numbers:
• If the number of matches is less than 3, the player loses his bet.
• Otherwise, the player gets back an additional $2, $25 or, $331 if the matches are respectively 3, 4, or 5.

What is the expected value of money won by the player in a game?

*** Adapted from a problem by S.W. Golomb.

No Solution Yet Submitted by K Sengupta    
Rating: 4.0000 (1 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
re: Solution | Comment 2 of 3 |
(In reply to Solution by Jer)

There's a typo in n=80*79*78*77*66. The last factor should be 76.


The value you use in the calculation is correct, giving the correct value.

But there's a consideration of what the player gets (or gets back) if he wins. The wording

the player gets back an additional $2, $25 or, $331

indicates the player also gets back the $1 he originally bet; in other words, if he wins, he doesn't offset that gain by loss of his original dollar.

(3*c3+26*c4+332*c5)/n =   0.780320944877907

still is not worth 1, but it's not as bad.

Equivalently the original figure could be used but instead of subtracting 1 to get the expected value, use the probability of a loss (times 1, the value of the loss) and subtract that.

Edited on July 12, 2022, 11:00 am
  Posted by Charlie on 2022-07-12 10:58:04

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