In this article we analyse the “two-dice horse race” task often used in lower secondary school, in which two ordinary dice are thrown repeatedly and each time the sum of the scores determines which horse (numbered 1 to 12) moves forwards one space. The process is repeated until one horse crosses the finishing line a fixed number of spaces away. We examine the difficulties involved in calculating the probability of any particular horse winning the race and carry out a simulation to estimate these probabilities. We conclude that while this task might be a helpful way to introduce sample space diagrams, great care is needed in interpreting the outcome of the race. The greater probability of obtaining a total score of 7 on a single throw of two dice is only partly responsible for horse 7’s greater chance of winining, since the length of the track is also important.

中文翻译：

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两骰子赛马

在这篇文章中，我们分析了初中经常使用的“双骰子赛马”任务，其中反复掷两个普通骰子，每次分数总和决定哪匹马（编号为1到12）向前移动一个格. 重复该过程，直到一匹马越过终点线固定数量的空格。我们研究了计算任何特定马匹赢得比赛的概率所涉及的困难，并进行模拟以估计这些概率。我们得出的结论是，虽然这项任务可能有助于引入样本空间图，但在解释比赛结果时需要非常小心。单次掷两个骰子获得总分 7 的更大概率只是马 7 获胜机会更大的部分原因，