Winner leading throughout a 100 to 80 count
Question
An election ends with ballots for candidate and for candidate . The ballots are shuffled uniformly at random and counted one at a time while a running tally is kept. What is the probability that after every ballot counted, has strictly more votes than (the empty tally at the start does not count)?
Short answer
. This is Bertrand's ballot theorem: with votes the probability leads throughout is , provable by conditioning on the last ballot and inducting on (or by the reflection principle). Here .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
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