AlgebraDifficulty 5.4AIME, harderProve itUnited States
Problem:
There are 8 lily pads in a pond numbered 1,2,…,8. A frog starts on lily pad 1. During the i-th second, the frog jumps from lily pad i to i+1, falling into the water with probability i+11. The probability that the frog lands safely on lily pad 8 without having fallen into the water at any point can be written as nm, where m,n are positive integers and gcd(m,n)=1. Find 100m+n.
Solution
Solution:
The probability the frog lands safely on lily pad i+1 given that the frog safely landed on lily pad i is i+1i. The probability the frog makes it to lily pad 8 safely is simply the product of the probabilities of the frog making it to each of the lily pads 2 through 8 given it had safely landed on the lily pad before it. Thus, the probability is 21⋅32⋯87=81.
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