Biased coin

Alice and Bob are playing with a biased coin with 60 % 60\% head and 40 % 40\% tail.
They repeat tossing the coin.
They decided that if a head-tail pattern appears first, Alice will win.
If a tail-head pattern appears first, Bob will win. (pattern means that they come consecutively)
(They will toss the coin repeatedly until one of them wins.)
What is the probability (in percentage) of winning for the one with higher probability? (if it is a 50 50 - 50 50 , enter 50 50 )


The answer is 60.

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2 solutions

展豪 張
Mar 30, 2016

The result only depends on the first trial.
If the first is a head, Alice wins. If it is a tail, Bob wins.
(Why?)
Answer = 60 =60


Alice can only win if the flips before the head-tail pattern are heads, otherwise Bob would have won before Alice (the consecutive head pattern would be broken by a tails, e.g. H H H T H H HH \underline{HT} HH ). Alice can therefore only win in the trials HT, HHT, HHHT, and so on. The probability of Alice winning is therefore ( 3 5 ) ( 2 5 ) + ( 3 5 ) 2 ( 2 5 ) + ( 3 5 ) 3 ( 2 5 ) + . . . = ( 2 5 ) ( 3 5 ) 1 3 5 = 3 5 \displaystyle \left(\frac{3}{5}\right)\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)+\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)^{2}\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)+\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)^{3}\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)+... = \frac{\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)}{1-\frac{3}{5}} = \frac{3}{5} .

Bob can only win if the flips before the tail-head pattern are tails, otherwise Alice would have won before Bob (the consecutive tails pattern would be broken by a heads, e.g. T T T H T T TT \underline{TH} TT ). Bob can therefore only win in the trials TH, TTH, TTTH, and so on. The probability of Bob winning is therefore ( 2 5 ) ( 3 5 ) + ( 2 5 ) 2 ( 3 5 ) + ( 2 5 ) 3 ( 3 5 ) + . . . = ( 2 5 ) ( 3 5 ) 1 2 5 = 2 5 . \displaystyle \left(\frac{2}{5}\right)\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)+\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)^{2}\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)+\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)^{3}\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)+... = \frac{\left(\frac{2}{5}\right)\left(\frac{3}{5}\right)}{1-\frac{2}{5}} = \frac{2}{5}.

Alice has the greatest chance of winning with a probability of 60 % \boxed{60\%} .

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