Ants assembly

Six ants are sitting at the six vertices of a hexagon, The ants start moving randomly towards one of the neighbor vertices and then stop. The probability that at least three ants will meet at the center of the hexagon can be expressed as a b \dfrac a b , where a a and b b are coprime positive integers, find a + b a+b .


The answer is 962.

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1 solution

Henry U
Jan 22, 2019

The probability of exactly 0 n 6 0 \leq n \leq 6 ants meeting at the center is

p ( n ) = ( 1 3 ) n ( 2 3 ) 6 n ( 6 n ) p(n) = \left( \frac 1 3 \right) ^n \cdot \left( \frac 2 3 \right) ^{6-n} \cdot \binom 6 n

This is because the probability of exactly n n specific ants moving to the center is ( 1 3 ) n \left( \frac 13 \right) ^n , the probability of the other 6 n 6-n ants moving somewhere else is ( 2 3 ) 6 n \left( \frac 23 \right) ^{6-n} , and finally there are ( 6 n ) \binom 6n ways to choose n n specific ants.

Now, we only have to add up all probabilities

p ( 3 ) + p ( 4 ) + p ( 5 ) + p ( 6 ) = 233 729 p(3)+p(4)+p(5)+p(6) = \frac {233}{729}

and so the answer is 233 + 729 = 962 233+729 = \boxed{962} .

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