BrainTeaser NSA Challenging

Problem - 4707

$\textbf{Lucky Seven}$

Two non-identical dice both have six faces but do not necessarily have one to six dots on each face. Some numbers are missing and some have more than six dots. These two dice roll every number from $2$ to $12$. What is the largest possible probability of rolling a $7$?


$\textbf{Answer}$

$\frac{13}{36}$.

$\textbf{Analysis}$

Assuming two dice have $m$ and $n$ different numbers, respectively. Then they can roll up to $(m\times n)$ different numbers. Given the pair rolls every number from $2$ to $12$, $(m\times n)$ must be no less than $11$. It follows that at least one of them must have no less than $4$ distinct numbers. (Otherwise, if both dices have up to $3$ distinct numbers, then they can only roll up to $3\times 3=9$ different numbers.) Let this die be the first die. Then the number of distinct numbers it has can only be $6$, $5$, or $4$.

If the first die has six different numbers, for every number on the second die, there is at most one number on the first die which can make their sum equal $7$. This means that the overall probability is at most $\frac{1}{6}$.

If the first die has five different numbers with one duplicate, then the second one must have at least three different numbers because $m\times n \ge 11$. With two dice, there are totally $6\times 6=36$ possible pairs which is a fixed number. Therefore, finding the maximum probability will be the same as finding the maximum number of pairs whose sums equal $7$. Given the occurrence of these five different numbers on the first dice are $2$, $1$, $1$, $1$, $1$ and each of these number has just one matching number to sum to $7$, it can be shown that the maximum will be achieved when the second dice has three different numbers with occurrences as $4$, $1$, $1$ and the matching numbers are paired in these orders. In this case, the probability will be $$\frac{2\times 4 + 1\times 1 + 1\times 1}{6\times 6}=\frac{10}{36}$$

If the first dice has four different numbers, the occurrences of these numbers can be either $(3, 1, 1, 1)$ or $(2, 2, 1, 1)$. Accordingly, the second dice should have at least three different numbers because $m\times n \ge 11$. Applying the same logic mentioned in the previous case will find the maximum probability can be archived as $$\frac{3\times 4 + 1\times 1 + 1\times 1}{6\times 6}=\frac{14}{36}$$

Combining these three cases gives the largest theoretical probability as $\frac{14}{36}$. However, this value is un-achievable because it will conflict with the given condition that these two dice can roll every number from $2$ to $12$ (see the note below). The next largest possible value is $\frac{13}{36}$. This can be achieved by the following two dice: $\{1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 5\}$ and $\{1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7\}$. Hence, the final answer is $\frac{13}{36}$.

$\textbf{Note}$

When a problem asks for the maximum or minimum values, a usual approach is to first seek a theoretical limit and then find a solution satisfying the theoretical limit. This example shows the importance of the second step. In this example, it can be proved that $14$ combination is impossible, though the proof is a bit lengthy. We will skip it here.

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