Coin flipping

Probability Level pending

If John flips a fair coin ten times, let the probability that he gets at least 5 heads in a row be a b \dfrac{a}{b} , where a a and b b are coprime positive integers . What is a + b a+b ?


The answer is 71.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Wen Z
Jul 21, 2016

Since nobody else has published a solution yet...

This question is basically just asking you to find a way to avoid double counting:

Case 1 : First five coins are heads: 1 32 \frac{1}{32} chance of occurring

Case 2 : Second five coins are heads: 1 32 \frac{1}{32} chance of occurring... but then we double count the ones where the first 6 coins are all heads. In fact there's a neat little trick to avoid this double counting: We suppose the first flip gives tails in case 2 as this then makes it mutually exclusive to Case 1. Now this case gives 1 64 \frac{1}{64}

Case 3,4,5,6 third set of five, etc. up to 6th set of five coins, each with a tails at the start. These four cases gives 4 64 \frac{4}{64}

Now we add the chances together to get 7 64 \frac{7}{64} with 7+64=71

Now try coin flipping 2

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...