Russian Roulette

[R1Geezer]

In the film "LIVE", 6 people play russian roulette. There is one gun with one live bullet, out of the six people each one is picked at random and fires the gun against their head. What is the best position to be in to survive that? would the person going first have the best chance of survival? It seems like it at first glance but it's not that simple (one at a time, they dont draw the order and then sart shooting)

[snags]

Is the barrel spun before each attempt or spun just once at the beginning?

[R1Geezer]

spun once at the begginning, but that is not relevant.

[tattoomaster]

3rd or 4th is bad as the weight of the bullet will keep it at lowest point

[R1Geezer]

This is a question about probability, he's deliberately trying to disrupt. If you and him are too dim to understand the question stay out of science.

[tattoomaster]

thank you lucy sorry about my 2nd post

[tattoomaster]

r1 that put me in my place o wise one lol

[S_C]

to play russian roulette at all would be mindless and stupid . the best position to be in in such a case would be NOT to be involved.
the chances of all who take part would be easily calculated.

if the gun was a 6 shooter then its simple every player has a 1 in 6 chance of diying.

however the last person to pull the trigger would be dead , simply as there would be no point in carrying on the " game " once the bullet had been dis-charged.

[S_C]

i should have stated that my answer was ment as from onset . obviously as each time the trigger is pulled the odds for survival go down by a factor of 1 .

[S_C]

With all the above said i would opt for last place simply because .

The chances of getting the full chamber rise as each shot is taken .

however the chances of someone else getting the bullet first prior to your go also increases with each shot taken, so the chances of you having to pull the trigger are the lowest.

[vascop]

According to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette
the chances of the last player being killed are 1/6, the same as the first player.
So, go first or last for the best chance of staying alive.

[vascop]

This makes sense, because the chances of dying for each person must add up to 1 since somebody has to die. The chance that none of the first 5 die is 5 x1/6, so the chance that the last person dies is 1-5x1/6 = 1/6.

[vascop]

Sorry my last post should be:
This makes sense, because the chances of dying for each person must add up to 1 since somebody has to die. The chance that one of the first 5 dies is 5 x1/6, so the chance that the last person dies is 1-5x1/6 = 1/6.

[Sandy-Wroe]

It would be best to go first. Then there would be 5 chances that you would survive and 1 that you wouldn't. The second player would only have 4 chances of surviving and so on. This assumes that the chamber of the weapon isn't spun after each play.

[vascop]

I think the important thing here is that the order has to be decided beforehand. So you can't argue on the basis of what happens after the first person has used the gun and so on. You have to look at the chances at the very beginning.

Chance that first player dies is 1/6

So, chance that second player gets to pull the trigger is 5/6 (1-1/6). His chances of dying are now 1/5 so his chance of dying from beginning is 5/6 times 1/5 = 1/6

Chance of third player getting a chance to pull trigger is 5/6 times 4/5.
He then has a chance of 1/4 of dying so his chance of dying from beginning is 5/6 times 4/5 times 1/4 = 1/6

And so on.
So this means that AT THE BEGINNING, everybody has an equal chance of dying and of surviving and so it doesn't matter which position you are in. Of course as the game progresses and no one dies then the chances of the next person dying goes up. But this is hindsight and so doesn't influence things at the beginning.

[vascop]

So i've changed my mind from my earlier post. I'm very humble!

[mjd]

Surely

[mjd]

Surely all of these arguments assume that the bullet is randomly distributed from the firing position at the start.
However if the chamber is spun before the process begins then it is more likely to stop in a position where the bullet is in a position after bottom dead centre and before top dead centre ( in the same way that an internal combustion engine always stops just before TDC). Therefore the first three people have more chance of dying than the last three.