A player draws from a bag containing 10 black and 10 white marbles one by one, without putting them back in.
Every time before drawing a marble he guesses the color of the marble he will draw.
He decides to always guess the color that occurs most frequently remaining in the bag (if there is a tie, he chooses either color).

Find the expected number of correct guesses.

Find a formula for the number of correct guesses for starting with X black and Y white marbles.

This problem is a modified version of Guessing suit and addresses an interesting question that came up in the comments.

(In reply to computer solution by Charlie)

The recursive version of the formula sought is there in line 90.

Is there an explicit form?

Posted by Jer on 2015-07-31 09:55:05