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Shooting where success rate equals past hit fraction

Question

A basketball player takes 100100 shots. The first goes in and the second misses. From then on, the chance of making each shot equals the proportion of shots made so far. What is the probability that the player finishes with exactly 5050 made shots?

Short answer

1/991/99. This is a Pólya urn: by induction, after nn shots the number made is uniform on {1,…,n−1}\{1,\dots,n-1\}. It holds for n=2n=2, and if made =k=k with probability 1n−1\tfrac1{n-1} for each kk, the next shot preserves uniformity on {1,…,n}\{1,\dots,n\}. So after 100100 shots each of 11 to 9999 has probability 199\tfrac1{99}.

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Basketball scores', p.83; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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