Ones against fives
A fair die is rolled 60 times. Let be the number of ones and the number of fives.
Find the correlation between and .
Fractions, decimals with at least 3 significant digits, and expressions such as sqrt(2)/2, e^-1 or pi/4.
Write and as sums of indicators over the rolls: and , where if roll is a one.
and are independent when . When , they cannot both be 1.
h
s Shown after a correct answer. Revealing it first marks the problem as seen, not solved.
Idea. Count with indicators. Different rolls are independent, so only the pairs of indicators on the same roll contribute to the covariance, and on one roll a one and a five exclude each other.
Step 1: variances. is binomial with and , so , and the same for .
Step 2: covariance. . Terms with vanish. For , (a roll cannot be both), so and .
Step 3.
Remarks. The number of rolls cancels: the answer is for any number of rolls. In general, for two categories with probabilities and , the correlation of their counts is . The correlation is negative because every roll that shows a one is a roll that does not show a five.