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
. Coupon collector with four equally likely suits: after suits have appeared, a new suit turns up with probability . Adding the geometric waiting times gives .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
- Conditional Expectation and Variance Revisited
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
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