Play Monopoly, Practice GRE Probability

If you don’t like math, you might be inclined to regard it as a special construction of the GRE, designed exclusively for your torture. In fact, GRE math pops up in many unexpected places. If your parents subjected you to the board game Monopoly when you were growing up, then GRE math even has a footing in your childhood memories.

Though Monopoly can hardly be called a strategy game, a few strategic insights can help players. One such insight is that the orange properties (St. James, Tennessee, and New York) are the best properties in the game. They’re an ideal distance away from Jail, which is the single most likely-to-be-landed-on space on the board. Whenever someone ends up in jail, they have a good chance to land on one of the orange properties when they get out.

The question is, how good?

To find out for sure, you’ll need to work with probability — a GRE math content area that instills dread in many students. Whenever you encounter a difficult probability problem on the GRE, see if you can’t simply use the fundamental probability formula:

Probability = (number of desired outcomes) / (number of total outcomes)

From Jail, a player will land on an orange property by rolling a 6, an 8, or a 9. On two dice, there are five ways to roll a 6, five ways to roll an 8, and four ways to roll a 9. Thus, if you own all three orange properties, there are 14 different ways (5 + 5 + 4) for a resident of Jail to end up on one of them. So 14 is your number of “desired” outcomes.

What about the number of total outcomes? Dice have six faces and players in Monopoly roll two dice to move, so the number of total outcomes is six to the second power, or 6^2 = 36. Thus, the probability that a resident of Jail will owe you orange rent is:

14 / 36 = 7 / 18 = ~39%

In a game determined mostly by luck, nearly 40% odds of having your way are pretty amazing. If you have to play Monopoly again, try to trade for the orange properties and use your knowledge of GRE math to crush your opponents!