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Third throw landing farther out than the first

Question

Three darts are thrown at a board with identical, independent skill, so their distances from the bullseye are i.i.d. continuous random variables. Given that dart two landed farther out than dart one, find the chance that dart three also lands farther out than dart one.

Short answer

2/32/3. Only the ranking of the three distances matters, and all 66 orderings are equally likely. Of the 33 orderings with D2>D1D_2>D_1, the third exceeds the first in 22 (D1<D2<D3D_1<D_2<D_3 and D1<D3<D2D_1<D_3<D_2).

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Dart game', p.74; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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