Chapter 2

Problems

2.1 Standard Dice

2. On average, how many times must a 6-sided die be rolled until a 6 turns up twice in a row?

3. On average, how many times must a 6-sided die be rolled until the sequence 65 appears (i.e., a 6
followed by a 5)?

4. On average, how many times must a 6-sided die be rolled until there are two rolls in a row that differ
by 1 (such as a 2 followed by a 1 or 3, or a 6 followed by a 5)? What if we roll until there are two
rolls in a row that differ by no more than 1 (so we stop at a repeated roll, too)?

5. We roll a 6-sided die n times. What is the probability that all faces have appeared?

6. We roll a 6-sided die n times. What is the probability that all faces have appeared in order, in some
six consecutive rolls (i.e., what is the probability that the subsequence 123456 appears among the n
rolls)?

7. Person A rolls n dice and person B rolls m dice. What is the probability that they have a common
face showing (e.g., person A rolled a 2 and person B also rolled a 2, among all their dice)?

8. On average, how many times must a 6-sided die be rolled until all sides appear at least once? What
about for an n-sided die?

9. On average, how many times must a 6-sided die be rolled until all sides appear at least twice?

10. On average, how many times must a pair of 6-sided dice be rolled until all sides appear at least once?

11. Suppose we roll n dice. What is the expected number of distinct faces that appear?

12. Suppose we roll n dice and keep the highest one. What is the distribution of values?

13. Suppose we can roll a 6-sided die up to n times. At any point we can stop, and that roll becomes our
“score”. Our goal is to get the highest possible score, on average. How should we decide when to
stop?

14. How many dice must be rolled to have at least a 95% chance of rolling a six?

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A Collection of Dice Problems Matthew M. Conroy

15. How many dice must be rolled to have at least a 95% chance of rolling a one and a two? What about
a one, a two, and a three? What about a one, a two, a three, a four, a five and a six?

16. How many dice should be rolled to maximize the probability of rolling exactly one six? two sixes? n
sixes?

17. Suppose we roll a fair die 100 times. What is the probability of a run of at least 10 sixes?

18. Suppose we roll a fair die until some face has appeared twice. For instance, we might have a run of
rolls 12545 or 636. How many rolls on average would we make? What if we roll until a face has
appeared three times?

19. Suppose we roll a fair die 10 times. What is the probability that the sequence of rolls is non-decreasing
(i.e., the next roll is never less than the current roll)?

20. Suppose a pair of dice are thrown, and then thrown again. What is the probability that the faces
appearing on the second throw are the same as the first?
What if three dice are used? Or six?

21. A single die is rolled until a run of six different faces appears. For example, one might roll the se-
quence 535463261536435344151612534 with only the last six rolls all distinct. What is the expected
number of rolls?

22. What is the most probable: rolling at least one six with six dice, at least two sixes with twelve dice,
or at least three sixes with eighteen dice? (This is an old problem, frequently connected with Isaac
Newton.)

23. Suppose we roll n dice, remove all the dice that come up 1, and roll the rest again. If we repeat this
process, eventually all the dice will be eliminated. How many rolls, on average, will we make? Show,
for instance, that on average fewer than O(log n) throws occur.

24. Suppose we roll a die 6k times. What is the probability that each possible face comes up an equal
number of times (i.e., k times)? Find an asymptotic expression for this probability in terms of k.

25. Call a “consecutive difference” the absolute value of the difference between two consecutive rolls
of a die. For example, the sequence of rolls 14351 has the corresponding sequence of consecutive
differences 3, 1, 2, 4. What is the expected number of times we need to roll a die until all 6 consecutive
differences have appeared?

2.2 Dice Sums

26. Show that the probability of rolling 14 is the same whether we throw 3 dice or 5 dice. Are there other
examples of this phenomenon?

27. Show that the probability of rolling a sum of 9 with a pair of 5-sided dice is the same as rolling a sum
of 9 with a pair of 10-sided dice. Are there other examples of this phenomenon? Can we prove there
are infinitely many such?

28. Suppose we roll n dice and sum the highest 3. What is the probability that the sum is 18?

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A Collection of Dice Problems Matthew M. Conroy

29. Four fair, 6-sided dice are rolled. The highest three are summed. What is the distribution of the sum?

30. A fair, n-sided die is rolled until a roll of k or greater appears. All rolls are summed. What is the
expected value of the sum?

31. A pair of dice is rolled repeatedly. What is the expected number of rolls until all eleven possible sums
have appeared? What if three dice are rolled until all sixteen possible sums have appeared?

32. A die is rolled repeatedly and summed. What can you say about the expected number of rolls until
the sum is greater than or equal to n?

33. A die is rolled repeatedly and summed. Show that the expected number of rolls until the sum is a
multiple of n is n.

34. A fair, n-sided die is rolled and summed until the sum is at least n. What is the expected number of
rolls?

35. A die is rolled and summed repeatedly. What is the probability that the sum will ever be a given value
x? What is the limit of this probability as x → ∞?

36. A die is rolled and summed repeatedly. Let x be a positive integer. What is the probability that the
sum will ever be x or x + 1? What is the probability that the sum will ever be x, x + 1, or x + 2? Etc.?

37. A die is rolled once; call the result N . Then N dice are rolled once and summed. What is the
distribution of the sum? What is the expected value of the sum? What is the most likely value?

What the heck, take it one more step: roll a die; call the result N . Roll N dice once and sum them;
call the result M . Roll M dice once and sum. What’s the distribution of the sum, expected value,
most likely value?

38. A die is rolled once. Call the result N . Then, the die is rolled N times, and those rolls which are
equal to or greater than N are summed (other rolls are not summed). What is the distribution of the
resulting sum? What is the expected value of the sum?

39. Suppose n six-sided dice are rolled and summed. For each six that appears, we sum the six, and reroll
that die and sum, and continue to reroll and sum until we roll something other than a six with that die.
What is the expected value of the sum? What is the distribution of the sum?

40. A die is rolled until all sums from 1 to x are attainable from some subset of rolled faces. For example,
if x = 3, then we might roll until a 1 and 2 are rolled, or until three 1s appear, or until two 1s and a 3.
What is the expected number of rolls?

41. How long, on average, do we need to roll a die and sum the rolls until the sum is a perfect square
(1, 4, 9, 16, . . . )?

42. How long, on average, do we need to roll a die and sum the rolls until the sum is prime? What if we
roll until the sum is composite?

2.3 Non-Standard Dice

43. Show that the probability of rolling doubles with a non-fair (“fixed”) die is greater than with a fair die.

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A Collection of Dice Problems Matthew M. Conroy

44. Is it possible to have a non-fair six-sided die such that the probability of rolling 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 is the
same whether we roll it once or twice (and sum)? What about for other numbers of sides?

45. Find a pair of 6-sided dice, labelled with positive integers differently from the standard dice, so that
the sum probabilities are the same as for a pair of standard dice.

46. Is it possible to have two non-fair n-sided dice, with sides numbered 1 through n, with the property
that their sum probabilities are the same as for two fair n-sided dice?

47. Is it possible to have two non-fair 6-sided dice, with sides numbered 1 through 6, with a uniform sum
probability? What about n-sided dice?

48. Suppose that we renumber three fair 6-sided dice (A, B, C) as follows: A = {2, 2, 4, 4, 9, 9},B =
{1, 1, 6, 6, 8, 8}, and C = {3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7}.

(a) Find the probability that die A beats die B; die B beats die C; die C beats die A.

(b) Discuss.

49. Find every six-sided die with sides numbered from the set {1,2,3,4,5,6} such that rolling the die
twice and summing the values yields all values between 2 and 12 (inclusive). For instance, the die
numbered 1,2,4,5,6,6 is one such die. Consider the sum probabilities of these dice. Do any of them
give sum probabilities that are “more uniform” than the sum probabilities for a standard die? What
if we renumber two dice differently - can we get a uniform (or more uniform than standard) sum
probability?

50. Let’s make pairs of dice that only sum to prime values. If we minimize the sum of all the values on
the faces, what dice do we get for 2-sided dice, 3-sided dice, etc.?

2.4 Games with Dice

51. Two players each roll a die. Player 1 rolls a fair m-sided die, while player 2 rolls a fair n sided die,
with m > n. The winner is the one with the higher roll. What is the probability that Player 1 wins?
What is the probability of a tie? If the players continue rolling in the case of a tie until they do not tie,
which player has the higher probability of winning? If the tie means a win for Player 1 (or player 2),
what is their probability of winning?

52. Craps The game of craps is perhaps the most famous of all dice games. The player begin by
throwing two standard dice. If the sum of these dice is 7 or 11, the player wins. If the sum is 2,3 or
12, the player loses. Otherwise, the sum becomes the player’s point. The player continues to roll until
either the point comes up again, in which case the player wins, or the player throws 7, in which case
they lose. The natural question is: what is a player’s probability of winning?

53. Non-Standard Craps We can generalize the games of craps to allow dice with other than six
sides. Suppose we use two (fair) n-sided dice. Then we can define a game analogous to craps in the
following way. The player rolls two n-sided dice. If the sum of these dice is n + 1 or 2n − 1, the
player wins. If the sum of these dice is 2, 3 or 2n, then the player loses. Otherwise the sum becomes
the player’s point, and they win if they roll that sum again before rolling n + 1. We may again ask:
what is the player’s probability of winning?