A biased coin is tossed repeatedly. Assume that the outcomes of different tosses are independent and the probability of heads is for each toss. What is the probability of obtaining an even number of heads in 5 tosses?
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If the number of heads is even, then there will be 0, 2, or 4 heads among the five. Let X be the number of heads among the 5 tosses.
If there are 0 heads, then all five tosses will be tails.
P ( X = 0 ) = ( 3 1 ) 5 = 2 4 3 1
If there are 2 heads, then the remaining 3 tosses will be tails. There are ( 2 5 ) combinations of 2 heads and 3 tails.
P ( X = 2 ) = ( 2 5 ) ( 3 2 ) 2 ( 3 1 ) 3 = 2 4 3 4 0
If there are 4 heads, then the remaining toss will be tails. There are ( 4 5 ) combinations of 4 heads and 1 tails.
P ( X = 4 ) = ( 4 5 ) ( 3 2 ) 4 ( 3 1 ) = 2 4 3 8 0
Each of these events is mutually exclusive. Therefore, the probability that there is an even number of heads is:
P ( X = 0 ) + P ( X = 2 ) + P ( X = 4 ) = 2 4 3 1 2 1 .