This article is written by students.

It may include omissions and imperfections,

as far as possible, reported by our reviewers in the editorial notes.

A dice game
[Year 2019 – 2020]

SURNAMES AND FIRST NAMES OF STUDENTS, GRADES: Sabrina Elena BENCHEA,

George-Octavian GRUMĂZESCU, Mara Elena MARDARASEVICI, Ioana MUHA, Tudor
Andrei PRICOP, George Constantin RUSU, George-Ioan STOICA, students in 10th grade.

SCHOOL: Colegiul Naţional Costache Negruzzi, Iaşi

TEACHER: Adrian Zanoschi

RESEARCHER: Iulian Stoleriu, Faculty of Mathematics, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University

Iași.

1. PRESENTATION OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC

2. BRIEF PRESENTATION OF THE CONJECTURES AND RESULTS OBTAINED

At a casino, four fair dice, of different colours, are thrown simultaneously.

(1) A player bets on the sum 15. What are the chances of winning?
(2) On which sum should he bet, to have the highest chance of winning?
(3) On average, how many times the four dice must be thrown until one gets the most
probable sum?

MATh.en.JEANS 2019-2020 [Colegiul Național Costache Negruzzi, Iași] page 1

 This article is written by students. It may include omissions and imperfections,
as far as possible, reported by our reviewers in the editorial notes.

(4) Consider the questions (1)-(3) in the case of four regular hexagonal dice.
(5) A number of n differently coloured dice, each dice being a regular polyhedron with k
faces, are thrown simultaneously. What are the chances that the sum S appears?
(Check whether you obtain (1) and (41) as particular cases)

THE SOLUTION

1) Solution 1 – The Mathematic Way

We have to calculate :

p1
W
p2 , where p1 is the number of possibilities to obtain sum 15 with 4 dice

and
p2 is the total number of possibilities.

Obviously, each dice shows every digit from 1 to 6. So, it’s easy to say that
p2  64  1296

In the following, we have to compute in how many ways we can obtain sum 15.

Method 1. (using Sticks and Stones)

Let us assume that the dice are distinguishable. We can associate every dice with a
variable : a,b,c,d. We want all the positive a,b,c,d less than or equal to 6, such that :

a  b  c  d  15

MATh.en.JEANS 2019-2020 [Colegiul Național Costache Negruzzi, Iași] page 2

 This article is written by students. It may include omissions and imperfections,
as far as possible, reported by our reviewers in the editorial notes.

Using the Sticks and Stones (also named Stars and Bars) method, we find that there

14 
   364
are  3  ways to have a group of 4 positive integers (a,b,c,d), such that a  b  c  d  15 .
Now, we must substract the cases where at least one of a,b,c,d are greater than or equal
to 7. Without losing the generality, we assume that a  max(a, b, c, d ) .

7
 
 if a  7 , there are  2  ways
6
 
 if a  8 , there are  2  ways
5
 
 if a  9 , there are  2  ways
 4
 
 if a  10 , there are  2  ways
3
 
 if a  11 , there are  2  ways
 2
  1
 if a  12 , there is  2  way
 if a  13  min(b, c, d )  0 , which is clearly false.

Summing these values and multiplying them by 4 (to account for each of the 4 variables
 7   6 5   4  3   2
4                
2 2 2 2 2 2
being greater than or equal to 7), there are               cases that are
14 
   364
included in  3  , but are not possible (because a, b, c, d  1 ). We also observe that there
cannot be two numbers from a,b,c,d (a,b for example) , such that a, b  7 , due to the fact

 a  b  c  d  15

that  a, b, c, d  1

MATh.en.JEANS 2019-2020 [Colegiul Național Costache Negruzzi, Iași] page 3

 This article is written by students. It may include omissions and imperfections,
as far as possible, reported by our reviewers in the editorial notes.

So,
14    7   6   5   4   3   2  
p1     4                     364  4  21  15  10  6  3  1  364  4  56  364  224  140
 3    2  2  2  2  2  2 
p 140 35
W 1  
The chances of winning, if a player bets on sum 15 are p2 1296 324 .

Method 2.

Solution 2 - The Programming way

Due to the fact that 6  1296 is a very small number (for the computer), we can take all
4

the possibilities and count the ones that added up give 15.

With a precision of 5 decimals, we can see that, the exact answer is 0.10802 .

MATh.en.JEANS 2019-2020 [Colegiul Național Costache Negruzzi, Iași] page 4

 This article is written by students. It may include omissions and imperfections,
as far as possible, reported by our reviewers in the editorial notes.

MATh.en.JEANS 2019-2020 [Colegiul Național Costache Negruzzi, Iași] page 5