A knight is placed at the origin of the Cartesian plane. Each turn, the knight moves in an chess $\text{L}$-shape ($2$ units parallel to one axis and $1$ unit parallel to the other) to one of eight possible location, chosen at random. After $2016$ such turns, what is the expected value of the square of the distance of the knight from the origin?

For each $i=1,2,..N$, let $a_i,b_i,c_i$ be integers such that at least one of them is odd. Show that one can find integers $x,y,z$ such that $xa_i+yb_i+zc_i$ is odd for at least $\frac{4}{7}N$ different values of $i$.

A player is playing the following game. In each turn he flips a coin and guesses the outcome. If his guess is correct, he gains $ 1$ point; otherwise he loses all his points. Initially the player has no points, and plays the game until he has $ 2$ points. (a) Find the probability $ p_{n}$ that the game ends after exactly $ n$ flips. (b) What is the expected number of flips needed to finish the game?

Let $S=\{-100,-99,-98,\ldots,99,100\}$. Choose a $50$-element subset $T$ of $S$ at random. Find the expected number of elements of the set $\{|x|:x\in T\}$.

Let $T=\{a_1,a_2,\dots,a_{1000}\}$, where $a_1<a_2<\dots<a_{1000}$, be a uniformly randomly selected subset of $\{1,2,\dots,2018\}$ with cardinality $1000$. The expected value of $a_7$ can be written in reduced form as $\tfrac{m}{n}$. Find $m+n$.

You roll three fair six-sided dice. Given that the highest number you rolled is a $5$, the expected value of the sum of the three dice can be written as $\tfrac ab$ in simplest form. Find $a+b$.

The Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs are playing a best-of-five series basketball championship, in which the team that first wins three games wins the whole series. Assume that the probability that the Heat wins a given game is $x$ (there are no ties). The expected value for the total number of games played can be written as $f(x)$, with $f$ a polynomial. Find $f(-1)$.

Prove that from an $n\times n$ grid, one can find $\Omega (n^{\frac{5}{3}})$ points such that no four of them are vertices of a square with sides parallel to lines of the grid. Imagine yourself as Erdos (!) and guess what is the best exponent instead of $\frac{5}{3}$!

Two ducks, Wat and Q, are taking a math test with $1022$ other ducklings. The test has $30$ questions, and the $n$th question is worth $n$ points. The ducks work independently on the test. Wat gets the $n$th problem correct with probability $\frac{1}{n^2}$ while Q gets the $n$th problem correct with probability $\frac{1}{n+1}$. Unfortunately, the remaining ducklings each answer all $30$ questions incorrectly. Just before turning in their test, the ducks and ducklings decide to share answers! On any question which Wat and Q have the same answer, the ducklings change their answers to agree with them. After this process, what is the expected value of the sum of all $1024$ scores? [i]Proposed by Evan Chen[/i]

A permutation $(a_1, a_2, a_3, \dots, a_{2012})$ of $(1, 2, 3, \dots, 2012)$ is selected at random. If $S$ is the expected value of \[ \sum_{i = 1}^{2012} | a_i - i |, \] then compute the sum of the prime factors of $S$. [i]Proposed by Aaron Lin[/i]

You drop a 7 cm long piece of mechanical pencil lead on the floor. A bully takes the lead and breaks it at a random point into two pieces. A piece of lead is unusable if it is 2 cm or shorter. If the expected value of the number of usable pieces afterwards is $\frac{m}n$ for relatively prime positive integers $m$ and $n$, compute $100m + n$. [i]Proposed by Aaron Lin[/i]

Kate has two bags $X$ and $Y$. Bag $X$ contains $5$ red marbles (and nothing else). Bag $Y$ contains $4$ red marbles and $1$ blue marble (and nothing else). Kate chooses one of her bags at random (each with probability $\frac{1}{2}$) and removes a random marble from that bag (each marble in that bag being equally likely). She repeats the previous step until one of the bags becomes empty. At that point, what is the probability that the blue marble is still in bag $Y$?

Bob, having little else to do, rolls a fair $6$-sided die until the sum of his rolls is greater than or equal to $700$. What is the expected number of rolls needed? Any answer within $.0001$ of the correct answer will be accepted.

Tim is participating in the following three math contests. On each contest his score is the number of correct answers. $\bullet$ The Local Area Inspirational Math Exam consists of 15 problems. $\bullet$ The Further Away Regional Math League has 10 problems. $\bullet$ The Distance-Optimized Math Open has 50 problems. For every positive integer $n$, Tim knows the answer to the $n$th problems on each contest (which are pairwise distinct), if they exist; however, these answers have been randomly permuted so that he does not know which answer corresponds to which contest. Unaware of the shuffling, he competes with his modified answers. Compute the expected value of the sum of his scores on all three contests. [i]Proposed by Evan Chen[/i]

[4] Let $D$ be the set of divisors of $100$. Let $Z$ be the set of integers between $1$ and $100$, inclusive. Mark chooses an element $d$ of $D$ and an element $z$ of $Z$ uniformly at random. What is the probability that $d$ divides $z$?

A knight is placed at the origin of the Cartesian plane. Each turn, the knight moves in an chess $\text{L}$-shape ($2$ units parallel to one axis and $1$ unit parallel to the other) to one of eight possible location, chosen at random. After $2016$ such turns, what is the expected value of the square of the distance of the knight from the origin?

Prove that the following inequality holds with the exception of finitely many positive integers $n$: \[\sum_{i=1}^n\sum_{j=1}^n gcd(i,j)>4n^2.\]

We have $2022$ $1s$ written on a board in a line. We randomly choose a strictly increasing sequence from ${1, 2, . . . , 2022}$ such that the last term is $2022$. If the chosen sequence is $a_1, a_2, ..., a_k$ ($k$ is not fixed), then at the $i^{th}$ step, we choose the first a$_i$ numbers on the line and change the 1s to 0s and 0s to 1s. After $k$ steps are over, we calculate the sum of the numbers on the board, say $S$. The expected value of $S$ is $\frac{a}{b}$ where $a, b$ are relatively prime positive integers. Find $a + b.$

Let $N=10^{2024}$. $S$ is a square in the Cartesian plane with side length $N$ and the sides parallel to the coordinate axes. Inside there are $N$ points $P_1$, $P_2$, $\dots$, $P_N$ all of which have different $x$ coordinates, and the absolute value of the slope of any connected line between these points is at most $1$. Prove that there exists a line $l$ such that at least $2024$ of these points is at most distance $1$ away from $l$.

Let $\mathbb X$ be the set of all bijective functions from the set $S=\{1,2,\cdots, n\}$ to itself. For each $f\in \mathbb X,$ define \[T_f(j)=\left\{\begin{aligned} 1, \ \ \ & \text{if} \ \ f^{(12)}(j)=j,\\ 0, \ \ \ & \text{otherwise}\end{aligned}\right.\] Determine $\sum_{f\in\mathbb X}\sum_{j=1}^nT_{f}(j).$ (Here $f^{(k)}(x)=f(f^{(k-1)}(x))$ for all $k\geq 2.$)

Let $ S$ be a finite set of points in the plane such that no three of them are on a line. For each convex polygon $ P$ whose vertices are in $ S$, let $ a(P)$ be the number of vertices of $ P$, and let $ b(P)$ be the number of points of $ S$ which are outside $ P$. A line segment, a point, and the empty set are considered as convex polygons of $ 2$, $ 1$, and $ 0$ vertices respectively. Prove that for every real number $ x$ \[\sum_{P}{x^{a(P)}(1 \minus{} x)^{b(P)}} \equal{} 1,\] where the sum is taken over all convex polygons with vertices in $ S$. [i]Alternative formulation[/i]: Let $ M$ be a finite point set in the plane and no three points are collinear. A subset $ A$ of $ M$ will be called round if its elements is the set of vertices of a convex $ A \minus{}$gon $ V(A).$ For each round subset let $ r(A)$ be the number of points from $ M$ which are exterior from the convex $ A \minus{}$gon $ V(A).$ Subsets with $ 0,1$ and 2 elements are always round, its corresponding polygons are the empty set, a point or a segment, respectively (for which all other points that are not vertices of the polygon are exterior). For each round subset $ A$ of $ M$ construct the polynomial \[ P_A(x) \equal{} x^{|A|}(1 \minus{} x)^{r(A)}. \] Show that the sum of polynomials for all round subsets is exactly the polynomial $ P(x) \equal{} 1.$ [i]Proposed by Federico Ardila, Colombia[/i]

A fair coin is tossed repeatedly until there is a run of an odd number of heads followed by a tail. Determine the expected number of tosses.

Recall that a regular icosahedron is a convex polyhedron having 12 vertices and 20 faces; the faces are congruent equilateral triangles. On each face of a regular icosahedron is written a nonnegative integer such that the sum of all $20$ integers is $39.$ Show that there are two faces that share a vertex and have the same integer written on them.

A regular pentagon is drawn in the plane, along with all its diagonals. All its sides and diagonals are extended infinitely in both directions, dividing the plane into regions, some of which are unbounded. An ant starts in the center of the pentagon, and every second, the ant randomly chooses one of the edges of the region it's in, with an equal probability of choosing each edge, and crosses that edge into another region. If the ant enters an unbounded region, it explodes. After first leaving the central region of the pentagon, let $x$ be the expected number of times the ant re-enters the central region before it explodes. Find the closest integer to $100x$.

Let $N_9$ be the answer to problem 9. In a rainforest, there is a row of nine rocks labeled from $1$ to $N_9$. A gecko is standing on rock $1$. The gecko jumps according to following rules: [list] [*] if it is on rock $1$, then it will jump with equal probability to any of the other rocks. [*] if it is on rock $R$ and $R$ is prime, then it will jump to rock $N_9$. [*] if it is on rock $4$, then it will jump with equal probability to rock $1$ or rock $6$. [*] if it is on rock $R$ and $R$ is composite with $4<R<N_9$, then it will jump with equal probability to rock $Q$ or $S$, where $Q$ is the greatest composite number less than $R$, and $S$ is the smallest composite number greater than $R$. [*] if it is on rock $N_9$, then it stops jumping. [/list] The expected number of jumps the gecko will take to reach rock $N_9$ is $\tfrac{p}{q}$, where $p$ are $q$ relatively prime positive integers. Compute $p+q$.