Monaco - A program to determine probabilities, especially in dice and card games

Introduction

Over the last several years I have created, for my own use, a program I call Monaco. Its purpose is to determine solutions to a wide range of probability problems, especially ones arising in dice and card games. Note that, despite that the name Monaco suggests approximate answers through Monte Carlo simulation, exact answers to many problems are also available, often very quickly, and this is the recommended use of the program whenever possible. Other capabilities beyond the handling of simple dice and card problems include real number distributions, results from processes that transition between states in a regular pattern, known as Markov chains, analysis of some two player zero sum games, and analysis of grids of tiles of different types. However, most users will not need these capabilities.

It is possible that there may be others who would be interested in the program. So I have created a presentation (also available as PowerPoint) that provides an introduction to the basic features of the program and a tutorial for the program that although short, includes sufficient material to allow the user to handle a wide range of dice and card problems. A followup second tutorial that extends this further is also available.

In addition I also have three documents that show how Monaco can address - sometimes fully, sometimes partially, sometimes not at all - sets of probability problems that have been collected (not by me). The first is a set of 76 dice problems that can be found here. The second is a set of 20 probability problems that can be found here. The third is a set of 56 probability problems that can be found here. The levels of explanation of the solutions vary, but all three documents use features of the program that are beyond those explained in the two tutorial documents.

If interested after seeing at least some of that material (which may well prove to many people that they are not interested after all) then drop me a line at the address below and I can let you have a copy, together with the full program documentation - which is not included here as it is rather lengthy. It is needed to fully understand some of the solutions in the three problem documents referred to above, and can be used as a morte detailed tutorial as well as being a reference document. However, most potential users are advised to start with the first tutorial document - and might need to go no furthe while still solving a range of problems.

Contact information

Currently I am christopher.dearlove@gmail.com. My web site is at http://www.mnemosyne.uk

Last modification: 8th June 2024 (updated to version 2.34).