A fair six-sided dice is thrown. X denotes the number of throws up to and including the first even number thrown. What is the probability that X is an odd number?
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Take a look at how you can achieve odd X . O represents an odd roll and E represents an even roll.
By definition, the sequence of rolls will be O , O , … , O , E for some number of O ′ s. E and O have equal probabilities of 2 1 . Since there is only 1 way to achieve a certain value of X for any given X (it MUST be consecutive O ′ s ending with an E ), then the probability of achieving a given value of X is 2 X . If X is odd, then X ∈ { 1 , 3 , 5 … } .
The probability is equal to the following.
2 1 1 + 2 3 1 + 2 5 1 + … = 2 1 + 8 1 + 3 2 1 + … = i = 0 ∑ ∞ ( 2 1 ) 2 i + 1 = j = 0 ∑ ∞ 2 1 × ( 4 1 ) j = 1 − 4 1 2 1 = 4 3 2 1 = 3 2