[Math] Rolling two dices one fair and one unfair

bayes-theoremprobability

I've looked around many problems on dice but this one seem to combine different aspects. Let me know if it's duplicate.

Suppose you have two dice. One die is fair (P[X = i] = 1/6) for 1 ≤ i ≤ 6) and the other one is biased such that Pr[X = 1] = 2/6, Pr[X = 6] = 0 and Pr[X = i] = 1/6 for 2 ≤ i ≤ 5.

  1. You roll the two dice. What is the probability that the sum of the two dice is 5?
  2. You pick randomly one of the two dice and roll it three times. What is the probability
    that you have chosen the biased die given that the sum of values of the three rolls is 4?

I give you my approach but I'm not really convinced that I'm using the right results:

For the first one clearly we have the following possibilities (X=1,Y=4),(X=2,Y=3),(X=3,Y=2),(X=4,Y=1) we can denote each possibility by an event $A_i$ then $P(\sum A_i) = \sum P(A_i) = P(A_1) + P(A_2) + P(A_3) + P(A_4) = \frac{1}{36}3+\frac{2}{36} = \frac{5}{36}$. Here I'm using that $A_i$ are disjoint (that's why I put $\sum$ for the union symbol) and some kind of independence of the events of the type $(X=i,Y=j)$ so that I can calculate each probability as a product.

For the second one I'm using Bayes rule. I note A the event of taking the biased die and B the event that the sum of the three rolls is 4. Then:

$P(A/B) = \frac{P(B/A)P(A)}{P(B)}$

So now $P(A) = \frac{1}{2}$ and the only possibilities for the rolls are some permutation of 2 ones and 1 two like (1,1,2). When we use the fair die is $\frac{1}{6^3}$ and with the unbiased die is $\frac{1}{6*9}$ so that $P(B) = \frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{6^3}+\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{6*9}$.

Is this argument correct? What about the independence assumption made before?

Best Answer

Your answer to 1 is correct.

Your answer to 2 $A:$ the die rolled is a loaded $\lnot A$: not A or the die rolled is fair $B$ = the sum of 3 values is 4.

$P(B|A) = 3(\frac {2}{6})(\frac {2}{6})(\frac {1}{6})=\frac {12}{216}$

The only way to do it is if you roll $2$ two's and a one, and the one could show up on any of $3$ rolls.

$P(B|\lnot A) = 3(\frac {1}{6})(\frac {1}{6})(\frac {1}{6})=\frac {3}{216}$

$P(B) = P(A)P(B|A) + P(\lnot A)P(B|\lnot A) = (\frac 12)\frac {12}{216} + (\frac 12)(\frac {3}{216})$

And that gives you all of the necessary components to plug into Bayes law.

$\frac {12}{15} = \frac 45$

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