Consider an isolated habitat with plenty of resources, and a single cell of a particular unicellular organism. At the end of each day, , the cell divides into , where daughter cells with the probability proportional to itself. Find the expected cell population at the end of days.
If the expected value of cell population after a fortnight ( days ) can be represented as , where , submit the value of
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Consider a day d when each cell from previous day can divide into r new daughter cells where 1 ≤ r ≤ d .
As it's given that probability of cell p ( r ) dividing into r daughter cells is directly proportional to r itself, this means p ( r ) ∝ r p ( r ) = k r As, total probability must be equal to 1, we can say that r = 1 ∑ d p ( r ) = r = 1 ∑ d k r = 1 k = d ( d + 1 ) 2 p ( r ) = d ( d + 1 ) 2 r We know that each cell from day d − 1 will behave exactly as before with the exception that it can now divide into atmost d cells instead of d − 1 . Hence, the expectation E [ d ] equals E [ d ] = E [ d − 1 ] r = 1 ∑ d d ( d + 1 ) 2 r 2 We can also state E [ D ] as E [ D ] = d = 1 ∏ D r = 1 ∑ d d ( d + 1 ) 2 r 2 = d = 1 ∏ D d ( d + 1 ) 2 6 d ( d + 1 ) ( 2 d + 1 ) = d = 1 ∏ D 3 2 d + 1 We can write 1 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 5 ⋯ ( 2 n + 1 ) = 2 n n ! ( 2 n + 1 ) ! So, E [ D ] = d = 1 ∏ D 3 2 d + 1 = 6 D D ! ( 2 D + 1 ) ! Putting D = 1 4 E [ 1 4 ] = 7 2 9 9 4 3 4 9 6 9 2 9 3 7 5 giving the answer as 9 4 3 4 9 6 9 3 0 1 0 4