Race to three heads or three tails
Question
A fair coin is tossed repeatedly. Player one wins as soon as three heads have appeared in total, player two as soon as three tails have appeared in total; the heads or tails need not be consecutive. What is the expected number of tosses before someone wins?
Short answer
. The game lasts 3, 4 or 5 tosses. It ends at toss 3 with probability , at toss 4 with probability , and otherwise at toss 5 (). The mean is .
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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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