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1. Between two games offered to you, would you rather (i) roll a die once and ge

ID: 3008240 • Letter: 1

Question

1. Between two games offered to you, would you rather (i) roll a die once and get paid $1 million for each dot on the upturned face, or (ii) roll a die one million times and get paid $1 times the number on the upturned face for each roll? Why? (Suppose that you are risk averse.)

2. If you roll 2 fair dice and add the points on each of the upturned face, what is the most likely sum? What is the probability of getting this sum? Hint: For rolling 2 dice, there are 6 × 6 = 36 possible outcomes. You can write all 36 possible outcomes and find sum for each outcome, then find the probabilities of the sums. Or, alternatively, the number of ways of getting a particular sum ‘s’ can be found by expanding the ‘generating function’ g = and extracting the coefficient of .

Explanation / Answer

2.

Possible sums: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12

P(2) = 1/36; P(3)= 2/36; P(4)=3/36; P(5)=4/36; P(6)=5/36; P(7)=6/36; P(8)=5/36; P(9)=4/36; P(10)=3/36; P(11)=2/36; P(12)=1/36

Hence most likely sum = 7

1. Highest money that can be won by (i) = $6 million

Lowest money that can be won by (i) = $1 million

In (i), probability of all 6 outcomes are equal.

i.e P(1) =1/6; P(2)=1/6; P(3)=1/6; P(4)=1/6; P(5)=1/6; P(6)=1/6

where P(n) is the Probability of getting n million dollars.

In case (ii) total possible outcomes = 6^1000000

Lowest money = $1 million.

P(1)=1 / 6^1000000

Highest money = $6 millions

P(6)= 1/6^1000000

If I am a risk averse person, I would choose option (i) because I know the risks and the probability of winning the highest money is higher in case (i). Also a risk averse person is happy with lower returns for known risks, rather than higher returns for unknown risks.

Sum of all possible outcomes 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7 8 4 5 6 7 8 9 5 6 7 8 9 10 6 7 8 9 10 11 7 8 9 10 11 12