Wandering on a tetrahedron

The vertices of a tetrahedron are labeled A , B , C A, B, C and D D . A bug starts out on A A and moves randomly along an edge to another vertex every 10 seconds. After 20 seconds, what is the probability that the bug will end up at B B ?

If the probability can be written as a b \dfrac ab , where a a and b b are coprime positive integers, find a + b a+b .

Try more questions on Platonic Solids


Image credit: http://loki3.com/


The answer is 11.

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

Geoff Pilling
Apr 18, 2016

The first move, he has 1 / 3 1/3 chance of getting to each of B, C, and D. From 2 of these he can get to B with a 1 / 3 1/3 probability. Therefore, the probability of each is 1 / 3 2 / 3 = 2 / 9 1/3 * 2/3 = 2/9 .

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...