If I role two dice, their sum is most likely 7. So if I role a 2 with one die, is the next roll most likely to be a 5?

Question

Seems weird any way I think about it. Thanks!

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

The reason that the most likely sum of two 6-sided dice is 7 is that it’s the most common value that comes up when you make a list of all the sums of two numbers between 1 and 6. 7 can result from 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, and 6 +1, which makes up 6 out of the 36 possible combinations. Every other number in that range has a smaller number of possible combinations. It’s not that the first dice is magically influencing the second, it’s just that statistics says that 7 has to come up the most because it’s got the most entries on the list.