The Monte Carlo Method For Simulation Example Problem

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Q: A person has 5 neckties and randomly selects one tie each workday.
In a given workweek of 5 days, find the probability that the person
will wear the same tie two or more days a week.

A: Use the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on a die to represent the ties.
Ignore any sixes. Roll the die five times for each week and count
any time you get the same number twice as selecting the same tie
twice.

In the context of answer, is counting means writing down a number(tie) that has appeared multiple times in each week or counting how many times a certain number(tie) has appeared?

Best Answer

In your stated problem, "counting" is counting weeks where any tie was chosen twice.

After you do your trials, rolling the dice for X number of week sequences, you will end up with a number of weeks that a tie was chosen twice / number of week sequences you ran for your Monte Carlo series, and this value will be your estimated probability that in a future week a tie will be chosen twice.

The idea of Monte Carlo simulations is that when you have some sort of random set of events that are too large (or perhaps infinite) to exhaustively calculate all finite probabilities, so by running a number of random tests you can start to approximate the probability. The larger your number of tests, the better the approximation is.

Your particular assigned problem is pretty straightforward to calculate exhaustively, though to list out the 3125 different permutations would be a bit tedious. What the assignment is trying to show you is how many "weeks" you have to simulate to start to approach the final probability.

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