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Algebra Difficulty 4.5 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:

Weighted coins numbered 2,3,4,,20152, 3, 4, \ldots, 2015 are tossed. The coin numbered ii comes up heads with probability 1/(2i2)1/(2i^2). What is the probability that an odd number of coins come up heads?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:

Let PnP_n be the probability that an odd number out of the coins whose numbers are at most nn (1n20151 \leq n \leq 2015) come up heads. For 2n20152 \leq n \leq 2015, there are two ways for this to happen: coin nn is tails and an odd number of the preceding coins are heads, or coin nn is heads and an even number of the preceding coins are heads. So we have a recursion
Pn=(112n2)Pn1+12n2(1Pn1)=2n2Pn12Pn1+12n2=2(n21)Pn1+12n2. \begin{aligned} P_n & = \left(1 - \frac{1}{2n^2}\right) P_{n-1} + \frac{1}{2n^2} (1 - P_{n-1}) \\ & = \frac{2n^2 P_{n-1} - 2P_{n-1} + 1}{2n^2} \\ & = \frac{2(n^2 - 1) P_{n-1} + 1}{2n^2}. \end{aligned}
If we subtract 1/21/2 from each side, we have the factorization
Pn12=n21n2(Pn112) P_n - \frac{1}{2} = \frac{n^2 - 1}{n^2} \left(P_{n-1} - \frac{1}{2}\right)
Now, using the initial value P1=0P_1 = 0, we have
P201512=12n=22015n21n2=12n=22015(n1)(n+1)nn=12(122014)(342016)(232015)(232015)=121201620152=5042015 \begin{aligned} P_{2015} - \frac{1}{2} & = -\frac{1}{2} \cdot \prod_{n=2}^{2015} \frac{n^2 - 1}{n^2} \\ & = -\frac{1}{2} \cdot \prod_{n=2}^{2015} \frac{(n-1)(n+1)}{n \cdot n} \\ & = -\frac{1}{2} \cdot \frac{(1 \cdot 2 \cdots 2014)(3 \cdot 4 \cdots 2016)}{(2 \cdot 3 \cdots 2015)(2 \cdot 3 \cdots 2015)} \\ & = -\frac{1}{2} \cdot \frac{1 \cdot 2016}{2015 \cdot 2} \\ & = -\frac{504}{2015} \end{aligned}
and thus
P2015=125042015=10074030 P_{2015} = \frac{1}{2} - \frac{504}{2015} = \frac{1007}{4030}

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.