Expected Sum of Bills Drawn
A box contains 4 ten-dollar bills, 3 twenty-dollar bills, and 1 hundred-dollar bill. You draw 7 of these 8 bills uniformly at random without replacement. Find the expected total value of the bills drawn.
Work it out, then compare with the answer.
SolutionShow the worked solution
Total value in the box: over bills, so the mean bill is .
Label the bills with values . Let indicate that bill is drawn. By symmetry each bill is drawn with probability . The total drawn is . By linearity,
Equivalently, each of the draws is marginally a uniform bill, with mean , so .
Alternative. Exactly one bill is left behind, and it is uniform on the eight. Its expected value is , so .
Key idea. Each bill is drawn with probability , so linearity gives of the total without any joint distribution.