Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 90 of 260 #90 of 1964

Problem 90

AMC 10/12, early questions
Combinatorics Difficulty 3.2 Multiple choice

Debra flips a fair coin repeatedly, keeping track of how many heads and how many tails she has seen in total, until she gets either two heads in a row or two tails in a row, at which point she stops flipping. What is the probability that she gets two heads in a row but she sees a second tail before she sees a second head?

Pick one

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Official solution

We first want to find out which sequences of coin flips satisfy the given condition. For Debra to see the second tail before the second head, her first flip can't be heads, as that would mean she would either end with double tails before seeing the second head, or would see two heads before she sees two tails. Therefore, her first flip must be tails. The shortest sequence of flips by which she can get two heads in a row and see the second tail before she sees the second head is THTHHTHTHH, which has a probability of 125=132\frac{1}{2^5} = \frac{1}{32}. Furthermore, she can prolong her coin flipping by adding an extra THTH, which itself has a probability of 122=14\frac{1}{2^2} = \frac{1}{4}. Since she can do this indefinitely, this gives an infinite geometric series with a first term of 132\frac{1}{32} and a common ratio of 14\frac{1}{4}, which means the answer (by the infinite geometric series sum formula) is 132114=(B) 124\frac{\frac{1}{32}}{1-\frac{1}{4}} = \boxed{\textbf{(B) }\frac{1}{24}}.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.