Casinos and gaming companies across the country are joining together with the American Gaming Association (AGA) and the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) for the 14th annual Responsible Gaming Education Week (RGEW). 

While last year's theme, "Taking the Mystery Out of the Machine", focused on slot machines, this year is all about the house advantage with the "Know the Odds" theme. The AGA has supplied casinos with plenty of training materials such as quizzes, fliers, activity ideas, and more.

How well do you know the odds? Take this quiz and find out!

QUESTIONS:

1. If you are rolling a die, what is the probability that you will roll a six? What is the probability of rolling an even number?
2. What are the chances of drawing a queen from a complete deck of shuffled cards? What are the chances of drawing the queen of hearts?
3. If your friend bought two lottery tickets and offered you one, which of the following tickets would you choose to give you a better chance of winning? Why?
   Ticket 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
   Ticket 2: 5, 16, 24, 38, 41, 59
4. On Friday night, the weather forecaster says there is a 99 percent chance of rain for Saturday. Saturday turns out to be a beautiful day. Can you say the weather forecaster was wrong? Why or why not?
5. Two friends of yours are betting on the outcome of coin tosses. One of them always likes to bet on tails, and tails has come up three times in a row. She decides to change her bet for the next toss. She reasons that after three tails, a head is “due.” What is your advice?
6. A friend of yours has a cousin who was in a minor plane crash and survived. Whenever your friend has to fly in an airplane, she insists on being accompanied by her cousin, figuring that the probability of her cousin being in two plane crashes is very small. Is your friend’s reasoning correct?
7. Your favorite basketball team is down by one point. Time has run out in the fourth quarter, and your team has a player at the foul line for two shots. You know that this player has made 80 percent of the foul shots he has taken this season. What is the probability that your team will win the game in regulation?

ANSWERS:

1. The probability that you will roll a six is 1/6, or .1667, or 16.67%. Since there are three even numbers on a die (2, 4 and 6), the probability that you will roll an even number is 3/6, or 1/2, .50 or 50%.
2. The chance of drawing a queen is 4/52 = 1/13 = 7.69%. The chance of drawing a queen of hearts is 1/52 = 1.29%.
3. Because each number has the same likelihood of being selected, neither ticket gives the player a better chance of winning.
4. You can’t necessarily say the weather forecaster is wrong. With a 99 percent chance of rain, there is still a 1 percent chance of sun. No matter how probable rain is, it is
   still possible to get sun. In other words, a probability only tells you the likelihood of an outcome, not exactly what the outcome is going to be.
5. You should tell your friend that it doesn’t matter whether she changes her bet or not — either way, she can’t improve her chances of winning. No matter what happened before, the outcome of coin tosses is always random and the probability for heads is the same as the probability for tails. Coin flips, like dice rolls and lottery drawings, are not dependent on previous outcomes.
6. Your friend’s reasoning is not correct. Plane flights are not dependent events: in other words, the outcome of one flight does not have an effect on the outcome of subsequent flights. The airplanes used in commercial flights do not “remember” that someone was in a crash and thus exempt that person from further crashes.
7. The probability that he will make the first shot is 80 percent, and the probability that he will make the second shot is 80 percent, so the probability that he will make both is .80 x .80 = .64. Your team has a 64 percent chance of winning.

Source: AmericanGaming.org, Photo: foxumon

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