Re: The Unsinkable Titanic Thompson. Question about odds on page 142
It looks like several of these are wrong or stated so poorly that you have to guess at the context. Editors usually don't know math.
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Odds of throwing an ace on the first roll of the dice are eight-to-three.
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When you roll two dice, 11 rolls out of 36 have at least one ace. That's not close to 8:3 against. It's not too far from 7:3.
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Your best bet is throw the dice four times. To roll a 12 with the dice takes 24 throws
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Those propositions are close to 1/2. Rolling no ace in 4 rolls happens 625 out of 1296 times ~ 48.2%. Rolling no 6-6 in 24 rolls happens (35/36)^24 ~ 50.9% of the time. I'm not sure why those would be called the best bets.
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