Unknown Coin Flipping

You flip a coin of unknown bias, and it lands heads. There is a probability A B \frac{A}{B} that the coin lands heads on the second flip. Find A+B


The answer is 5.

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

Rory Cannon
Mar 11, 2018

Start with an integer N that goes to infinity. The possible probabilities of heads are 1 N \frac{1}{N} , 2 N \frac{2}{N} , ... N N \frac{N}{N} . Now, by conditional probability, the probability of a given M N \frac{M}{N} for heads is M N N ( N + 1 ) 2 \frac{\frac{M}{N}}{\frac{N(N+1)}{2}} , or 2 M N ( N + 1 ) \frac{2M}{N(N+1)} Given that it already landed heads, the probability that the coin lands heads again with a particular M N \frac{M}{N} bias is 2 M N ( N + 1 ) × M N \frac{2M}{N(N+1)}\times \frac{M}{N} = 2 M 2 N 2 ( N + 1 ) \frac{2M^{2}}{N^{2}(N+1)}

Taking into account all values of M≤N, we find 2 ( 1 2 + 2 2 + 3 2 + . . . N 2 ) N 2 ( N + 1 ) \frac{2(1^{2}+2^{2}+3^{2}+ ... N^{2})}{N^{2}(N+1)}

The sum of squares from 1 to N is given by the formula N ( N + 1 ) ( 2 N + 1 ) 6 \frac{N(N+1)(2N+1)}{6}

Plugging the formula into the previous obtains 2 ( N ( N + 1 ) ( 2 N + 1 ) 6 ) N 2 ( N + 1 ) \frac{2(\frac{N(N+1)(2N+1)}{6})}{N^{2}(N+1)}

Simplifying and then expanding yields 2 N + 1 3 N \frac{2N+1}{3N} = 2 3 \frac{2}{3} + 1 3 N \frac{1}{3N}

As N goes to infinity, the fraction tends to 2 3 \frac{2}{3} , So A=2 and B=3

A+B= 5 \boxed{5}

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...