Theoretical Probability of the Sums when Rolling a Fair Die 6 Times

diceprobabilityprobability distributionsprobability theory

You roll a fair die 6 times. What is the theoretical probability for the sum of each combination? For example, rolling a 1,1,1,1,1,1 has a sum of 6. Or what are all the possible combinations? I know there's 46,656. Is there any way to find these without having to do them by hand?

Best Answer

You can use generating functions here.

Suppose we represent a single die with the function $x + x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6$

The different exponents here represent the different possible outcomes of rolling the die.

Now, if you want the different possible outcomes of rolling two dice, just multiply this function by itself:

$$(x + x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6)\cdot(x + x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6)$$

$$= x^2+2x^3+3x^4+4x^5+5x^6+6x^7+5x^8+4x^9+3x^{10}+2x^{11}+x^{12}$$

Again, the different exponents here represent the possible outcoems, so they range from $2$ to $12$

But what's really neat, is that the coefficients represent the number of ways to get that outcome.

For example, the term $5x^6$ indicates that there are $5$ ways to get an outcome of $6$

Why does this work? Well, we get one term $x^6$ by multiplying $x$ from the first term and $x^5$ from the second (i.e. by throwing a $1$ with the first die, and a $5$ with the second), but we also got a term $x^6$ by multiplying $x^2$ from the first term and $x^4$ from the second (i.e. by throwing a $2$ with the first die, and a $4$ with the second), etc.

OK, so for $6$ dice, we just need to find the different coefficients and exponents for the following function:

$$(x + x^2+x^3+x^4+x^5+x^6)^6$$

Here is where a tool like WolframAlpha comes in:

Scroll down to the expanded form, and you'll find:

$$x^{36} + 6 x^{3}5 + 21 x^{34} + 56 x^{33} + 126 x^{32} + 252 x^{31} + 456 x^{30} + 756 x^{29} + 1161 x^{28} + 1666 x^{27}$$

$$ + 2247 x^{26} + 2856 x^{25} + 3431 x^{24} + 3906 x^{23} + 4221 x^{22} + 4332 x^{21} + 4221 x^{20} + 3906 x^{19}$$

$$ + 3431 x^{18} + 2856 x^{17} + 2247 x^{16} + 1666 x^{15} + 1161 x^{14} + 756 x^{13} + 456 x^{12} + 252 x^{11} + 126 x^{10}$$

$$ + 56 x^9 + 21 x^8 + 6 x^7 + x^6$$

So, for example, given the term $2856x^{17}$ we know that there are $2856$ ways for the $6$ dice to add up to $17$, meaning that the probability of getting a sum of $17$ is $\frac{2856}{46656}$