AlgebraDifficulty 4.5AIMEFind the answerUnited States
Problem:
An ant starts at one vertex of a tetrahedron. Each minute it walks along a random edge to an adjacent vertex. What is the probability that after one hour the ant winds up at the same vertex it started at?
A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.
Solution
Solution:
Let pn be the probability that the ant is at the original vertex after n minutes; then p0=1. The chance that the ant is at each of the other three vertices after n minutes is 31(1−pn). Since the ant can only walk to the original vertex from one of the three others, and at each there is a 31 probability of doing so, we have that pn+1=31(1−pn). Let qn=pn−41. Substituting this into the recurrence, we find that qn+1=41+31(−qn−43)=−31qn. Since q0=43, qn=43⋅(−31)n. In particular, this implies that p60=41+q60=41+43⋅3601=4⋅359359+1.
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.
Source: MathNet,
licensed CC-BY-4.0.
Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.