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A Coin Game (Posted on 2004-05-20) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Alex flips a fair coin 20 times. Bert spins a fair coin 21 times. Bert wins if he gets more heads than Alex, else Alex wins. Note that Alex wins if there is a tie. What is the probability that Bert wins?

See The Solution Submitted by Brian Smith    
Rating: 3.5000 (4 votes)

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Solution Answer | Comment 2 of 12 |
B flips his 21 coins and he gets H heads and T tails.
A flips his 20 coins and gets H' heads and T' tails.

Either H>H' (and then T<=T') or T>T' (and then H<=H'), so by symmetry B will either have more heads or more tails than B, but not both.

His chances are 50%-50% of winning.

  Posted by Oskar on 2004-05-20 14:17:57
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