Two identical perfect cubes (similar to dice) each having faces numbered 0,1,2,3,4,5 are rolled. A score for the roll is determined as the product of the two numbers on the two upper- most faces.
If the cubes are rolled twice and the scores for each roll are added, what is the probability of a combined score of at least 41?
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We just consider the cases that would allow this to happen.
We can't have 25 + 15 (5×5 on one roll and 5×3 on the other), since this is 40 – too small. We can't have anything smaller either. We can have 4×4 + 5×5 though (as this is exactly 16 + 25 = 41).
So the allowable combinations are {
((4,4), (5,5)),
((5,5),(5,5)),
((4,5),(5,5))}. (We can observe that anything else, e.g. 4×4 + 5×4 results in a smaller sum than 41).
((4,4), (5,5)) can be obtained from two rolls with a probability of
2×(1/36)×(1/36) (the 2 is there since we could obtain the 4's on the first roll and 5's on the second roll, OR the other way round. The 1/36 is the probability of getting a (4,4) on a given roll.).
((5,5),(5,5)) can be obtained from two rolls with probability
1/(64) (as there is only 1 way to get all 5's, and 6
4 total possibilities from two rolls).
((4,5),(5,5)) can be obtained from two rolls with probability
4×(1/6)4 (since this possibility is equivalent to choosing which die and on which roll will show the 4, with the remaining ones rolling 5; there are 4 ways to choose which die and which roll shows the 4, and for each of these ways, the probability of it occurring is (1/6)
4).
Hence the required probability
P is:
P = 2×(1/36)×(1/36) + 1/(6
4) + 4×(1/6)
4
= 2/(6
4)+ 1/(6
4) + 4/(6
4)
= 7/(6
4)
= 7/1296
≈ 0.00540 (3 sig. fig.).
(Edit: done above already)