Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 4.3 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:
You have infinitely many boxes, and you randomly put 3 balls into them. The boxes are labeled 1,2,1,2, \ldots. Each ball has probability 1/2n1 / 2^{n} of being put into box nn. The balls are placed independently of each other. What is the probability that some box will contain at least 2 balls?

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

Solution

Solution:
57 \frac{5}{7}
Notice that the answer is the sum of the probabilities that boxes 1,2,1,2, \ldots, respectively, contain at least 2 balls, since those events are mutually exclusive. For box nn, the probability of having at least 2 balls is
3[(1/2n)2(11/2n)]+(1/2n)3=322n223n=34n28n 3\left[\left(1 / 2^{n}\right)^{2}\left(1-1 / 2^{n}\right)\right]+\left(1 / 2^{n}\right)^{3}=\frac{3}{2^{2 n}}-\frac{2}{2^{3 n}}=\frac{3}{4^{n}}-\frac{2}{8^{n}}
Summing to infinity using the geometric series formula, we get the answer 3/411/42/811/8\frac{3/4}{1-1/4}-\frac{2/8}{1-1/8}, which is equal to 57\frac{5}{7}.

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