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Ten tosses where tails only come in pairs

Question

A fair coin is tossed 1010 times. What is the probability that the tails can be split into adjacent pairs, i.e. every maximal block of consecutive tails has even length? (With 44 tosses, TTHHTTHH, TTTTTTTT and HHHHHHHH qualify, while HTHHHTHH and TTTHTTTH do not.)

Short answer

89/102489/1024. A valid string ends in either HH or TTTT, so the count tnt_n satisfies tn=tn−1+tn−2t_n=t_{n-1}+t_{n-2} with t1=1t_1=1, t2=2t_2=2: Fibonacci numbers. Thus t10=89t_{10}=89 out of 210=10242^{10}=1024.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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