Number of such outcomes, in which each number is no less than the preceding number, will be equal to number of ways of selecting 4 numbers from 6, with replacement; without considering order!
Why?
Lets choose any such set of size 4, say {2, 1, 1, 3}. we can sort it to get a sequence {1,1,2,3} which is one of our desired outcomes. So each such sorted sequence corresponds to one selection of size 4, with replacement and without considering order.
Number of such selections will be equal to number of solutions of following equation:
x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x5 + x6 = 4
where:
x1: number of 1 in the selections
x2: number of 2s in the selection
.
.
x6: number of 6s in the selection
Number unique solutions of such equation = 9 choose 5 = 126
(For more details on this see : Unordered sampling with replacement )
Number of possible outcomes = 6^4 = 1296
Probability of favorable outcomes = 126/1296=7/72
inches long.
inches long.