A slot machine has three slots; each will show a cherry, a lemon, a star, or a bar when spun. The player wins if all three slots show the same three items. If each of the four items is equally likely to appear on a given spin, what is your probability of winning? (Enter your probability as a fraction.)

Question

Brogan Vargas

Mathematics

2 August, 22:44

A slot machine has three slots; each will show a cherry, a lemon, a star, or a bar when spun. The player wins if all three slots show the same three items. If each of the four items is equally likely to appear on a given spin, what is your probability of winning? (Enter your probability as a fraction.)

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Moshe Pierce · Answer 1

1/16

Step-by-step explanation:

Lets say you are trying to get the cherry when you are spinning. That means that in each slot there is a 1/4 chance of getting the cherry because out of 4 choices only one is the cherry. That is only for one slot and there are 3 slots. That means you take the probability for each slot which is 1/4 and multiply them together. Then you get 1/4*1/4*1/4 since there are 3 slots which is 1/64. However that is only for the cherry and there are 4 different items that you could get. This means there is 1/64 chance for each of the 4 items which is 1/64+1/64+1/64+1/64 which is 4*1/64 which is 1/16.