Today my professor said that if I roll two identical dice at the same time then there will be $21$ outcomes and the probability of getting sum of $7$ is $1/7$:
\begin{array}{c c c c c c}
\{1,1\}, & \{1,2\}, & \{1,3\}, & \{1,4\}, & \{1,5\}, & \{1,6\},\\
& \{2,2\}, & \{2,3\}, & \{2,4\}, & \{2,5\}, & \{2,6\},\\
& & \{3,3\}, & \{3,4\}, & \{3,5\}, & \{3,6\},\\
& & & \{4,4\}, & \{4,5\}, & \{4,6\},\\
& & & & \{5,5\}, & \{5,6\},\\
& & & & & \{6,6\}
\end{array}
but when I roll two different dice, then the probability of getting sum of 7 is $1/6$
\begin{array}{c c c c c c}
(1,1) & (1,2) & (1,3) & (1,4) & (1,5) & (1,6)\\
(2,1) & (2,2) & (2,3) & (2,4) & (2,5) & (2,6)\\
(3,1) & (3,2) & (3,3) & (3,4) & (3,5) & (3,6)\\
(4,1) & (4,2) & (4,3) & (4,4) & (4,5) & (4,6)\\
(5,1) & (5,2) & (5,3) & (5,4) & (5,5) & (5,6)\\
(6,1) & (6,2) & (6,3) & (6,4) & (6,5) & (6,6)
\end{array}
How this is possible?
Best Answer
If you roll two identical dies, there are 21 outcomes, but they have different probabilities: probability to get $(1, 1)$ (or any outcome with the same numbers on both dies) is $\frac{1}{36}$, but probability to get $(1, 3)$ (or any outcome with different numbers) is $\frac{2}{36}$. So correct answer for two identical dies is $P((1, 6)) + P((2, 5)) + P((3, 4)) = \frac{6}{36} = \frac{1}{6}$ too.
Just having set of $n$ outcomes doesn't mean any outcome has probability of $\frac{1}{n}$.