Leading candidate never trailing in a 100 to 80 count
Question
In an election candidate receives votes and candidate receives . The ballots are shuffled and counted one at a time, with a running total for each. Let be the probability that 's running total is never below 's at any point after counting begins (ties are allowed). Compute .
Short answer
. All orderings are equally likely, so count lattice paths. A path is bad iff it touches the line where leads by one; reflecting the part up to the first touch gives a bijection with all paths to a shifted endpoint, so . Here that is .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
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