morbeedo wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:29 pm
Oh, man, that Yahtzee probability question!
Hard to watch the +1 steer the contestant away from the right answer. Total bummer.
I looked it up on bobbymgsk.wordpress.com (I wish there were more discussion of the other airings, as those are the ones I actually watch), and I have to ask: was his transcript of one of the choices as
a typo? I was doing the math, and I suspect I would have made a mistake had the number not given me pause by not jibing with my calculations, making me realize that
1/6^5 gives you the odds of rolling a Yahtzee of a particular number, and six different Yahtzees are possible, making the answer 1/6^4.
That reminds me of the Whiz Kids Week (or whatever it was called) contestant on Millionaire who was asked, given the tradition of each Supreme Court justice shaking hands with all the others before entering the court, how many handshakes occur before they go in.
He correctly figured out that each justice would shake hands with eight others, and multiplied 8 x 9 = 72 for his final answer. However, he overlooked the fact that after, say, Alito shakes hands with Thomas, Thomas doesn't have to then go and shake hands with Alito, and so the total only needs to be half of 72.