Penalty streak with success rate equal to past rate
Question
You will take penalty kicks. The first one goes in and the second one misses. From the third kick on, your chance of scoring equals the proportion of kicks you have scored so far (e.g. after goals in kicks, kick scores with probability ). What is the probability that your total number of goals after all kicks is exactly ?
Short answer
. This is a Pólya urn started with one success and one failure: every particular sequence with further goals in the remaining kicks has probability , so the number of further goals is uniform on . Scoring in total needs more, which has probability .
Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
See the hint and the full worked solution in the question bank (free account).
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
Start with a free lesson: Probability Fundamentals is part of a free topic. Create a free account, no card needed, to read it in full with worked solutions.
Read it free