Dice Rolling To Infinity

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?

1/2 5/6 2/3 4/5

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1 solution

Trevor B.
Aug 2, 2014

Take a look at how you can achieve odd X . X. O O represents an odd roll and E E represents an even roll.

By definition, the sequence of rolls will be O , O , , O , E O,O,\ldots,O, E for some number of O O' s. E E and O O have equal probabilities of 1 2 . \frac{1}{2}. Since there is only 1 1 way to achieve a certain value of X X for any given X X (it MUST be consecutive O O' s ending with an E E ), then the probability of achieving a given value of X X is 2 X . 2^X. If X X is odd, then X { 1 , 3 , 5 } . X\in\{1,3,5\ldots\}.

The probability is equal to the following.

1 2 1 + 1 2 3 + 1 2 5 + = 1 2 + 1 8 + 1 32 + = i = 0 ( 1 2 ) 2 i + 1 = j = 0 1 2 × ( 1 4 ) j = 1 2 1 1 4 = 1 2 3 4 = 2 3 \begin{aligned} \dfrac{1}{2^1}+\dfrac{1}{2^3}+\dfrac{1}{2^5}+\ldots&=\dfrac{1}{2}+\dfrac{1}{8}+\dfrac{1}{32}+\ldots\\ &=\sum_{i=0}^\infty\left(\dfrac{1}{2}\right)^{2i+1}\\ &=\sum_{j=0}^\infty\dfrac{1}{2}\times\left(\dfrac{1}{4}\right)^j\\ &=\dfrac{\frac{1}{2}}{1-\frac{1}{4}}\\ &=\dfrac{\frac{1}{2}}{\frac{3}{4}}=\boxed{\dfrac{2}{3}} \end{aligned}

exactly the same :)

math man - 6 years, 9 months ago

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