Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 6 / 323 of 400 #1323 of 1964

Problem 1323

National Olympiad, first round
Combinatorics Difficulty 6.5 Find the answer

Maria and Bilyana play the following game. Maria has 20242024 fair coins and Bilyana has 20232023 fair coins. They toss every coin they have. Maria wins if she has strictly more heads than Bilyana, otherwise Bilyana wins. What is the probability of Maria winning this game?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

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Official solution

1. Let p p be the probability that among the first 2023 2023 coins, Maria has more heads than Bilyana. By symmetry, this is also the probability that Bilyana has more heads than Maria. Let q q be the probability that Maria and Bilyana have the same number of heads among the first 2023 2023 coins. Since these are the only possible outcomes, we have:
2p+q=1 2p + q = 1

2. Now consider the 2024 2024 -th coin that Maria has. There are two cases to consider:
- The 2024 2024 -th coin is a tail.
- The 2024 2024 -th coin is a head.

3. If the 2024 2024 -th coin is a tail, then Maria wins if she has more heads than Bilyana among the first 2023 2023 coins. The probability of this happening is p p .

4. If the 2024 2024 -th coin is a head, then Maria wins if she has at least as many heads as Bilyana among the first 2023 2023 coins. The probability of this happening is p+q p + q .

5. Since the 2024 2024 -th coin is fair, the probability of it being a head or a tail is 12 \frac{1}{2} . Therefore, the total probability of Maria winning is:
12p+12(p+q) \frac{1}{2} \cdot p + \frac{1}{2} \cdot (p + q)

6. Simplifying the expression, we get:
12p+12(p+q)=12p+12p+12q=2p+q2 \frac{1}{2} \cdot p + \frac{1}{2} \cdot (p + q) = \frac{1}{2} \cdot p + \frac{1}{2} \cdot p + \frac{1}{2} \cdot q = \frac{2p + q}{2}

7. From step 1, we know that 2p+q=1 2p + q = 1 . Substituting this into the expression, we get:
2p+q2=12 \frac{2p + q}{2} = \frac{1}{2}

Therefore, the probability of Maria winning the game is 12 \frac{1}{2} .

The final answer is 12 \boxed{\frac{1}{2}} .

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