Statistics Question for Blind Bag purchases.

Question

If the odds of getting a certain character in a blind bag is 1 in 5 and the bags cost $2.00 each, how much will you need to spend before you might get a certain one? Is it as simple as 5 x $2.00 = $10.00 ? Or 1 desired character per $10 purchase?

Answer 1

It depends on whether there are only 5 characters and each is equally likely.  If one is rare, say 1 out of a hundred bags, all bets are off!  Basically, you need to know the probability of each character. 

 

If the probabilities are all 20%, like you said, then the AVERAGE number of bags a person would have to buy is 1/20% = 5.

 

Realize that this is just an average.  No guarantee.  Some people will get that character on the first bag and some may need to buy 10 or 20 bags (or more)!

 

Good luck!