View Full Version : Probability of 7 Cards
happyclp
Oct 21, 2009, 08:35 PM
I am studying for a test and am struggling with this question. Can anyone help?
Suppose you have an unusual deck of cards for a game called Seven-Oh! The probabilities
of drawing each card (1 through 7) in this game are given in the table.
x prob(x)
1 0.11
2 0.08
3 0.23
4 0.22
5 0.05
6 0.15
7 0.16
Suppose someone makes a casino game from these cards. It costs $10 to play, and
you could win $100 if you draw a 5 or you could win $10 if you draw a 2 or a 7.
Otherwise, you win $0. Is this a winning game? Determine the probabilities of
each dollar amount (including $0) and calculate the expected value to answer this
question.
Nhatkiem
Oct 21, 2009, 08:51 PM
I am studying for a test and am struggling with this question. Can anyone help?
Suppose you have an unusual deck of cards for a game called Seven-Oh! The probabilities
of drawing each card (1 through 7) in this game are given in the table.
x prob(x)
1 0.11
2 0.08
3 0.23
4 0.22
5 0.05
6 0.15
7 0.16
Suppose someone makes a casino game from these cards. It costs $10 to play, and
you could win $100 if you draw a 5 or you could win $10 if you draw a 2 or a 7.
Otherwise, you win $0. Is this a winning game? Determine the probabilities of
each dollar amount (including $0) and calculate the expected value to answer this
question.
Lets generalize this a bit. Instead of winning 100 dollars 5% of the time, we can make it 10 dollars 50% of the time. (For example if you play 100 games, you should win about 5 times, either way you earn 500 dollars.)
The probability of winning 10 dollars back then is 0.5+0.16++0.08
So your probability of winning JUST your money back is 74%, over time, you will end up losing money from not making it back.
happyclp
Oct 21, 2009, 08:57 PM
Okay, but how do you figure it out by using expected value?
Nhatkiem
Oct 21, 2009, 08:59 PM
I recall something like this back in high school haha. Something I kind of just thought about.
A winning game would mean you would make back your money, so I just though about the odds of getting $10 back out of 100 games.
morgaine300
Oct 21, 2009, 10:06 PM
Think of it like this:
There's .05 probability of getting the 5. That gets you $100
There's .24 probability of getting the 2 or the 7. (.08 + .16) That gets you $10.
Now, what's the probability of getting nothing? If you get a 1, 3, 4 or 6. What's the probability of getting any of those?
That is basically in the end your three possibilities of what will happen. If you add the probabilities together, then instead of having 7 different cards, you have 3 different possibilities of the outcome.
(You can apply this to all sorts of possibilities, like getting a 5 or higher would be the totals of the 5, 6 & 7, etc.)
Try putting that together and see if you can go from there.
Nhatkiem
Oct 21, 2009, 10:55 PM
Think of it like this:
There's .05 probability of getting the 5. That gets you $100
There's .24 probability of getting the 2 or the 7. (.08 + .16) That gets you $10.
Now, what's the probability of getting nothing? If you get a 1, 3, 4 or 6. What's the probability of getting any of those?
That is basically in the end your three possibilities of what will happen. If you add the probabilities together, then instead of having 7 different cards, you have 3 different possibilities of the outcome.
(You can apply this to all sorts of possibilities, like getting a 5 or higher would be the totals of the 5, 6 & 7, etc.)
Try putting that together and see if you can go from there.
While this is all correct, the main question is whether this is a winning game or losing game, so finding the probability of drawing the cards you want alone are not enough. Since different cards have different winning values.
morgaine300
Oct 23, 2009, 12:04 AM
I never said it was enough. It was a hint to get the person started. It's the concept of not doing peoples homework for them.