If I rolled n fair six-sided dice rolled simultaneously, what's the expected value (in terms of n) of the highest valued die?

(Note: "expected value" refers to the number you would expect to get if you ran this simulation many times and averaged the results.)

I think it's 6-6/(n+1)... I dimly believe I was told a similar formula was used in World War II to estimate how much tanks or vehicles the enemy had, working from the unit numbers, or something like that...

Posted by Old Original Oskar! on 2004-12-08 18:04:15