Home > Probability
| The carnival game (Posted on 2003-09-18) |
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You look at a carnival game. The person running it says, "Just reach your hand into this bag. There are 9 yellow balls and 1 red ball in the bag. You get 4 chances to pull out the red ball. (You have to put the ball you drew back before you draw another ball.) You only have to pay one dollar to play, and you get 3 dollars if you pull out the red ball!"
Assuming the person running the game is telling the truth, and the balls only differ in color, would you expect to make a net profit or a net loss on this game?
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Submitted by Gamer
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Rating: 3.5556 (9 votes)
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Solution:
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If you play the game 10000 times, theoretically you would lose 9^4 (or 6561) times and win 10000-6561 (or 3439) times. (3439*3)-10000 is 317.
So, if you played 10000 times, you would theoretically make 317 dollars. So you would more likely make money than lose it, but you would only notice a profit if you played many times.
If you didn't have enough money to cancel out your losing streaks, you might end up losing more than winning, as said here. |
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