/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5657890]

Is Who wants to be a millionaire just a game of luck?

I mean, there's 25% chance of being right unless the person happen to know the answer, and lifelines can only get you so far into the game.

[Anonymous No.5657897]

Let's say there are 15 questions with 4 choices each. Let's also say there are 3 lifelines: call-a-friend, 50-50, and ask-the-audience.

For each of the 15 questions, there is only 1 correct answer, and 3 incorrect answers, so immediately your chances are 1/4 = 25%. You can use each lifeline once. Using phone-a-friend, let's say gives you a 95% chance the person you call is correct. So 1 question is 95%. Similarly, we can say ask-the-audience gives you a 95% chance. Finally, 50-50 will remove 2 wrong answers, so you have 1 right answer and 1 wrong answer, so you basically have a 50% chance of knowing the answer. To recap:

Question 1: 25%
Question 2: 25%
Question 3: 25%
Question 4: 95% <--- ask-the-audience
Question 5: 25%
Question 6: 25%
Question 7: 25%
Question 8: 25%
Question 9: 95% <--- phone-a-friend
Question 10: 25%
Question 11: 25%
Question 12: 25%
Question 13: 25%
Question 14: 25%
Question 15: 50% <--- 50-50
Total: (25%)^12 * (95%)^2 * 50% = 2.689 * 10^-6 %
So basically, it's more a less a game of chance, but more than half the people on the show will lose, so it's not very fair. That show is making tons of money off of people.

[Anonymous No.5657896]

shouldn't there be a lot more winners than there actually is statistically?

I guess people walking away ruins it.

[Anonymous No.5657902]

>33.34%

U wot m8?

[Anonymous No.5657907]

>>5657897
>That show is making tons of money off of people.
nobody even watches it anymore, you can tell because the overall difficulty of the questions went way up

well, difficulty is a bad way to describe it
obscurity

[Anonymous No.5657909]

.999.....=1

[Anonymous No.5657919]

Reported everyone in this thread for shitposting