Setting a coin bias to make a first-head race fair
Question
Two players take turns tossing their own coins; whoever gets the first head wins. The friend's coin lands heads with probability , and to compensate the friend tosses first. Steven, who tosses second, can choose any heads probability for his own coin. What makes the game fair, i.e. gives each player a winning chance of ?
Short answer
. Each full round both tosses are tails with probability , so the friend wins with probability . Setting this to gives , so .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Maximum Likelihood Estimation: Score and Log-Likelihood
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