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Say we roll n identical, fair dice, each with d sides. (Every side comes up with the same probability.) On each die, the sides are numbered from $1$ to d with no repeating numbers, as you would expect. So it's an ordinary d sided die pool.

How would we calculate the odds of the highest rolled die value from a given dice pool equaling the highest rolled die value from a different dice pool?

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  • $\begingroup$ You can use the order-statistic formulas in this wikipedia article to compute the probability of a specific number being the max roll. I’m not sure that there’s any more convenient way to work out the probabilities of matching values of two rolls besides working through the cases. $\endgroup$
    – amd
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 2:54

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Let $(X_i)_{i=1}^n, (Y_i)_{i=1}^n$ be the sequence of results from the individual die, which are mutually-independent and identically uniformly-discrete-distributed random values.

So, to get you on your way:

$$\begin{align}&\qquad\mathsf P(\max{(X_i)}_{i=1}^d=\max{(Y_i)}_{i=1}^d) \\[1ex]&=~ \sum_{k=1}^d \mathsf P(\max{(X_i)}_{i=1}^d=k)\cdot\mathsf P(\max{(Y_i)}_{i=1}^d=k)\\[1ex] &=~\sum_{k=1}^d \mathsf P\left(\bigcap_{i=1}^d \{X_i\leq k\} \smallsetminus\bigcap_{j=1}^d \{X_j\leq (k-1)\}\right)\cdotp\mathsf P\left(\bigcap_{i=1}^d \{Y_i\leq k\} \smallsetminus\bigcap_{j=1}^d \{Y_j\leq (k-1)\})\right)\\[1ex] &=~\sum_{k=1}^d \left(\mathsf P(X_1\leq k)^d -\mathsf P(X_1\leq (k-1))^d\right)\cdotp\left(\mathsf P(Y_1\leq k)^d -\mathsf P(Y_1\leq (k-1))^d\right)\\[1ex] &=~\sum_{k=1}^d \dfrac{(k^n-(k-1)^n)^2}{d^{2n}}\\[1ex]&~\ddots\end{align}$$

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    $\begingroup$ You've assumed that the number of dice in each pool is the same which isn't an assumption in the OP. $\endgroup$
    – Dale M
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 3:17
  • $\begingroup$ @DaleM - the question says the number of dice in the pool is $n$ so it is not an unreasonable assumption. But if one pool had $n$ dice and the other had $m$ dice, then the answer would be $\sum\limits_{k=1}^d \dfrac{(k^n-(k-1)^n)(k^m-(k-1)^m)}{d^{n+m}}$ $\endgroup$
    – Henry
    Commented Oct 7, 2020 at 7:57

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