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Fair price per door with two prizes in seven

Question

A game show has 77 closed doors; 22 of them hide a prize of $200\text{\char36}200 and the remaining 55 are empty, with no clue as to which is which. You open doors one at a time at random, never reopening one, and stop as soon as you uncover a prize. If each door you open costs $x\text{\char36}x, what value of xx makes the game fair?

Short answer

7575 dollars. The two prize doors split the five empty ones into three gaps of equal expected size 53\tfrac53, so the expected number of doors opened is 53+1=83\tfrac53+1=\tfrac83. Fairness requires 83x=200\tfrac83x=200, giving x=75x=75.

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

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