Rolls until a six given every roll is even
Question
You keep rolling a fair die until a comes up, counting the final roll. Conditional on every roll in the sequence having been even, what is the expected number of rolls?
Short answer
. Stop the process at the first roll that is not a 2 or 4; this time is geometric with success probability , and it is independent of which of 1, 3, 5, 6 ends it. The condition says that ending value is 6, which does not change the law of , so the answer is .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
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