Heads or tails

A particular biased coin has a 25 % 25\% chance of landing tails when flipped. What is the expected number of coin flips that must occur before four tails are tossed in a row?


The answer is 340.

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1 solution

Miles Koumouris
Jun 26, 2017

If x x is the expected number of tosses it takes to get four tails in a row, and the probability of tossing a tails is 1 4 \dfrac{1}{4} , then we can form the equation

x = 3 4 ( x + 1 ) + 3 16 ( x + 2 ) + 3 64 ( x + 3 ) + 3 256 ( x + 4 ) + 1 64 x=\dfrac{3}{4}(x+1)+\dfrac{3}{16}(x+2)+\dfrac{3}{64}(x+3)+\dfrac{3}{256}(x+4)+\dfrac{1}{64}

x = 340 \Longrightarrow x=\boxed{340} .

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