Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Oxford / Undated / Prelims / Mathematics III resit / 6 / c / i / Solution

Let $R$ denote the red die. Conditional on $R=r$, each white roll succeeds independently with probability $p_r=(7-r)/6$. Consequently $T\mid R=r$ has the geometric distribution on $\{1,2,\dots \}$ and expected value $1/p_r=6/(7-r)$. The law of total expectation givesThis is $2.45$ rolls; the averaging must be over conditional expected values, not over success probabilities before taking a reciprocal.