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Draws with replacement until every suit appears

Question

Cards are drawn one at a time from a standard 52-card deck, with each card put back (and the deck reshuffled) before the next draw. What is the expected number of draws until all four suits have been seen?

Short answer

253\tfrac{25}{3}. Coupon collector with four equally likely suits: after jj suits have appeared, a new suit turns up with probability 4−j4\tfrac{4-j}{4}. Adding the geometric waiting times gives 1+43+2+4=2531+\tfrac43+2+4=\tfrac{25}{3}.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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