My son and I recently spent a lovely fall afternoon exploring the carnival games and amusement rides at a local fair. My son is quite adventurous when it comes to amusement park rides and is eager to try just about any ride that he meets the height requirement for. While we were walking through the midway, I spotted a carnival game called "Roll Down" that appeared to have a bit of mathematics involved. The object of this "game of skill" is to roll six balls down and inclined ramp to land in one of six numbered bins. If the sum of the six rolls is under 10 or over 31, you win. Is this game worth the $5 price to play? What are my chances of winning? Should I go for under 10 or over 31? Is this just a carnival scam or is there some skill involved? The bins are just wide enough for a ball to fit so it is very difficult to aim a ball with accuracy. You also have to question if the balls roll straight and if the board is smooth and level. Lets just assume that the balls fall into a random bin (you could then play an equivalent game at home by rolling 6, six-sided dice). With six balls, the smallest sum possible is 6 (all 1's) and the largest is 36 (all 6's). How many ways are there to get each possible value? There are only 31 possible sums (6-36) that you can score. To roll a sum of under 10, you can score 6, 7, 8 or 9. To roll a sum of over 31, you can score 32, 33, 34, 35, or 36. At first glance, it looks like you have a 9/31 chance of winning but this is not correct.
This reminds me of a bet in the casino game craps that looks good, but on further inspection is really bad. The field bet is a bet on the sum of the next roll of two six-sided dice. If the sum of the two dice is 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 or 12 you win. If the sum is 5, 6, 7 or 8 then you lose. It has the illusion that there are more ways to win than lose, but you are much more likely to roll one of the losing numbers. With practice at Roll Down, you might be able to achieve better than the random results that I detailed above. Instead of this practice, I decided to spend my $5 at the concession stand to buy a hand-battered, deep fried corn dog. A midway concession stand can also be considered a bit of a gamble, but in this case it was a delicious win! EL
Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
|