Free throws where accuracy follows past success
Question
Frank's opening free throw goes in and his next one does not. From the third attempt on, the chance he makes any given shot equals the fraction of his earlier attempts that went in. What is the probability that he has made exactly of his first attempts?
Short answer
. This is a Pólya urn started with one make and one miss. For such an urn the number of additional makes in the next shots is uniform on , so over the remaining shots each of the totals is equally likely, including exactly more makes.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
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