# Programming a Conditional Probability Problem

Hi all. I have been working my way through the Probability course, specifically the section on Conditional Probability, when I fell upon this linked problem.

By solving the linked problem recursively, you find that you have a $\frac{1}{3}$ probability of winning the game.

I thought this would be a fun problem to program, so I wrote a program in Python 3 to solve this using Monte Carlo methods. The program and output of the program can be seen below.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 from random import choice trials = 10000000 #number of times the game is played (10,000,000) lose = 0 win = 0 for game in range(1, trials): options = [1,2,3,4,5,6] #can roll any of these numbers chips = 1 #starting point for each game while chips > 0 and chips < 4: #continue this loop for as long as you haven't lost or won roll = choice(options) #picking random number out of options, like rolling a die if roll == 1 or roll == 2 or roll == 3: chips -= 1 elif roll == 4 or roll == 5: chips += 1 elif roll == 6: chips += 2 if chips <= 0: lose += 1 elif chips >= 4: win += 1 print(win/lose) #probability of winning 

Output:

0.5001471644515492


Assuming the program is correct, the probability of winning the game is approximately $\frac{1}{2}$, as opposed to the original solution that states you have a $\frac{1}{3}$ chance of winning the game.

Can anyone explain what is going on here (it is very possible that my code has something wrong with it, or I am misunderstanding some fundamental concept. If you catch anything please point it out :)?

Note by Sam Everett
3 years, 6 months ago

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Excellent simulation. Your code is mostly correct, except for a small typo in line 21. Can you figure it out?

- 3 years, 6 months ago