Found problems: 178
2007 Stanford Mathematics Tournament, 22
Katie begins juggling five balls. After every second elapses, there is a chance she will drop a ball. If she is currently juggling $ k$ balls, this probability is $ \frac{k}{10}$. Find the expected number of seconds until she has dropped all the balls.
2011 China Girls Math Olympiad, 4
A tennis tournament has $n>2$ players and any two players play one game against each other (ties are not allowed). After the game these players can be arranged in a circle, such that for any three players $A,B,C$, if $A,B$ are adjacent on the circle, then at least one of $A,B$ won against $C$. Find all possible values for $n$.
2010 ELMO Shortlist, 1
For a permutation $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$, let $\text{Inv}(\pi)$ be the number of pairs $(i,j)$ with $1 \leq i < j \leq n$ and $\pi(i) > \pi(j)$.
[list=1]
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \text{Inv}(\pi)$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?
[*] Given $n$, what is $\sum \left(\text{Inv}(\pi)\right)^2$ where the sum ranges over all permutations $\pi$ of $\{1,2,3,\ldots,n\}$?[/list]
[i]Brian Hamrick.[/i]
ICMC 6, 5
A clock has an hour, minute, and second hand, all of length $1$. Let $T$ be the triangle formed by the ends of these hands. A time of day is chosen uniformly at random. What is the expected value of the area of $T$?
[i]Proposed by Dylan Toh[/i]
2013 ELMO Shortlist, 3
Let $a_1,a_2,...,a_9$ be nine real numbers, not necessarily distinct, with average $m$. Let $A$ denote the number of triples $1 \le i < j < k \le 9$ for which $a_i + a_j + a_k \ge 3m$. What is the minimum possible value of $A$?
[i]Proposed by Ray Li[/i]
2013 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament, 15
Tim and Allen are playing a match of [i]tenus[/i]. In a match of [i]tenus[/i], the two players play a series of games, each of which is won by one of the two players. The match ends when one player has won exactly two more games than the other player, at which point the player who has won more games wins the match. In odd-numbered games, Tim wins with probability $3/4$, and in the even-numbered games, Allen wins with probability $3/4$. What is the expected number of games in a match?
2020 Putnam, B3
Let $x_0=1$, and let $\delta$ be some constant satisfying $0<\delta<1$. Iteratively, for $n=0,1,2,\dots$, a point $x_{n+1}$ is chosen uniformly form the interval $[0,x_n]$. Let $Z$ be the smallest value of $n$ for which $x_n<\delta$. Find the expected value of $Z$, as a function of $\delta$.
2009 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament, 7
Paul fills in a $7\times7$ grid with the numbers $1$ through $49$ in a random arrangement. He then erases his work and does the same thing again, to obtain two different random arrangements of the numbers in the grid. What is the expected number of pairs of numbers that occur in either the same row as each other or the same column as each other in both of the two arrangements?
2022 JHMT HS, 3
Dr. G has a bag of five marbles and enjoys drawing one marble from the bag, uniformly at random, and then putting it back in the bag. How many draws, on average, will it take Dr. G to reach a point where every marble has been drawn at least once?
2007 Princeton University Math Competition, 4
A cube is formed from $n^3$ ($n \ge 2$) unit cubes, each painted white on five randomly selected sides. This cube is dipped into paint remover and broken into the original unit cubes. What is the expected number of these unit cubes with exactly four sides painted white?
2013 ELMO Problems, 1
Let $a_1,a_2,...,a_9$ be nine real numbers, not necessarily distinct, with average $m$. Let $A$ denote the number of triples $1 \le i < j < k \le 9$ for which $a_i + a_j + a_k \ge 3m$. What is the minimum possible value of $A$?
[i]Proposed by Ray Li[/i]
2014 NIMO Problems, 6
Suppose $x$ is a random real number between $1$ and $4$, and $y$ is a random real number between $1$ and $9$. If the expected value of \[ \left\lceil \log_2 x \right\rceil - \left\lfloor \log_3 y \right\rfloor \] can be expressed as $\frac mn$ where $m$ and $n$ are relatively prime positive integers, compute $100m + n$.
[i]Proposed by Lewis Chen[/i]
1976 AMC 12/AHSME, 12
A supermarket has $128$ crates of apples. Each crate contains at least $120$ apples and at most $144$ apples. What is the largest integer $n$ such that there must be at least $n$ crates containing the same number of apples?
$\textbf{(A) }4\qquad\textbf{(B) }5\qquad\textbf{(C) }6\qquad\textbf{(D) }24\qquad \textbf{(E) }25$
2014 NIMO Problems, 10
Among $100$ points in the plane, no three collinear, exactly $4026$ pairs are connected by line segments. Each point is then randomly assigned an integer from $1$ to $100$ inclusive, each equally likely, such that no integer appears more than once. Find the expected value of the number of segments which join two points whose labels differ by at least $50$.
[i]Proposed by Evan Chen[/i]
2018 PUMaC Individual Finals B, 2
Aumann, Bill, and Charlie each roll a fair $6$-sided die with sides labeled $1$ through $6$ and look at their individual rolls. Each flips a fair coin and, depending on the outcome, looks at the roll of either the player to his right or the player to his left, without anyone else knowing which die he observed. Then, at the same time, each of the three players states the expected value of the sum of the rolls based on the information he has. After hearing what everyone said, the three players again state the expected value of the sum of the rolls based on the information they have. Then, for the third time, after hearing what everyone said, the three players again state the expected value of the sum of the rolls based on the information they have. Prove that Aumann, Bill, and Charlie say the same number the third time.
2010 Princeton University Math Competition, 6
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 $100x$.
2009 Math Prize For Girls Problems, 20
Let $ y_0$ be chosen randomly from $ \{0, 50\}$, let $ y_1$ be chosen randomly from $ \{40, 60, 80\}$, let $ y_2$ be chosen randomly from $ \{10, 40, 70, 80\}$, and let $ y_3$ be chosen randomly from $ \{10, 30, 40, 70, 90\}$. (In each choice, the possible outcomes are equally likely to occur.) Let $ P$ be the unique polynomial of degree less than or equal to $ 3$ such that $ P(0) \equal{} y_0$, $ P(1) \equal{} y_1$, $ P(2) \equal{} y_2$, and $ P(3) \equal{} y_3$. What is the expected value of $ P(4)$?
2017 CHMMC (Fall), 9
Rachel the unicorn lives on the numberline at the number $0$. One day, Rachel decides she’d like to travel the world and visit the numbers $1, 2, 3, \ldots, 31$.
She starts off at the number $0$, with a list of the numbers she wants to visit: $1, 2, 3, \ldots , 31$. Rachel then picks one of the numbers on her list uniformly at random, crosses it off the list, and travels to that number in a straight line path. She repeats this process until she has crossed off and visited all thirty-one of the numbers from her original list. At the end of her trip, she returns to her home at $0$. What is the expected length of Rachel’s round trip?
2012 BMT Spring, 8
You are tossing an unbiased coin. The last $ 28 $ consecutive flips have all resulted in heads. Let $ x $ be the expected number of additional tosses you must make before you get $ 60 $ consecutive heads. Find the sum of all distinct prime factors in $ x $.
2013 Math Prize For Girls Problems, 18
Ranu starts with one standard die on a table. At each step, she rolls all the dice on the table: if all of them show a 6 on top, then she places one more die on the table; otherwise, she does nothing more on this step. After 2013 such steps, let $D$ be the number of dice on the table. What is the expected value (average value) of $6^D$?
2022 JHMT HS, 9
Let $B$ and $D$ be two points chosen independently and uniformly at random from the unit sphere in 3D space centered at a point $A$ (this unit sphere is the set of all points in $\mathbb{R}^3$ a distance of $1$ away from $A$). Compute the expected value of $\sin^2\angle DAB$.
2021 AMC 10 Fall, 16
Five balls are arranged around a circle. Chris chooses two adjacent balls at random and interchanges them. Then Silva does the same, with her choice of adjacent balls to interchange being independent of Chris's. What is the expected number of balls that occupy their original positions after these two successive transpositions?
$(\textbf{A})\: 1.6\qquad(\textbf{B}) \: 1.8\qquad(\textbf{C}) \: 2.0\qquad(\textbf{D}) \: 2.2\qquad(\textbf{E}) \: 2.4$
2022 HMNT, 10
There are 21 competitors with distinct skill levels numbered 1, 2,..., 21. They participate in a ping-pong tournament as follows. First, a random competitor is chosen to be "active", while the rest are "inactive." Every round, a random inactive competitor is chosen to play against the current active one. The player with the higher skill will win and become (or remain) active, while the loser will be eliminated from the tournament. The tournament lasts for 20 rounds, after which there will only be one player remaining. Alice is the competitor with skill 11. What is the expected number of games that she will get to play?
2021 BMT, 8
Consider the randomly generated base 10 real number $r = 0.\overline{p_0p_1p_2\ldots}$, where each $p_i$ is a digit from $0$ to $9$, inclusive, generated as follows: $p_0$ is generated uniformly at random from $0$ to $9$, inclusive, and for all $i \geq 0$, $p_{i + 1}$ is generated uniformly at random from $p_i$ to $9$, inclusive. Compute the expected value of $r$.
2021-2022 OMMC, 8
Isaac repeatedly flips a fair coin. Whenever a particular face appears for the $2n+1$th time, for any nonnegative integer $n$, he earns a point. The expected number of flips it takes for Isaac to get $10$ points is $\tfrac ab$ for coprime positive integers $a$ and $b$. Find $a + b$.
[i]Proposed by Isaac Chen[/i]