This website contains problems from math contests. Problems and corresponding tags were obtained from the Art of Problem Solving website.

Tags were heavily modified to better represent problems.

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Found problems: 178

2023 AIME, 6

Alice knows that $3$ red cards and $3$ black cards will be revealed to her one at a time in random order. Before each card is revealed, Alice must guess its color. If Alice plays optimally, the expected number of cards she will guess correctly is $\frac{m}{n}$, where $m$ and $n$ are relatively prime positive integers. Find $m+n$.

2021 Alibaba Global Math Competition, 1

In a dance party initially there are $20$ girls and $22$ boys in the pool and infinitely many more girls and boys waiting outside. In each round, a participant is picked uniformly at random; if a girl is picked, then she invites a boy from the pool to dance and then both of them elave the party after the dance; while if a boy is picked, then he invites a girl and a boy from the waiting line and dance together. The three of them all stay after the dance. The party is over when there are only (two) boys left in the pool. (a) What is the probability that the party never ends? (b) Now the organizer of this party decides to reverse the rule, namely that if a girl is picked, then she invites a boy and a girl from the waiting line to dance and the three stay after the dance; while if a boy is picked, he invites a girl from the pool to dance and both leave after the dance. Still the party is over when there are only (two) boys left in the pool. What is the expected number of rounds until the party ends?

2014 SDMO (Middle School), 2

A dog has three trainers: [list] [*]The first trainer gives him a treat right away. [*]The second trainer makes him jump five times, then gives him a treat. [*]The third trainer makes him jump three times, then gives him no treat. [/list] The dog will keep picking trainers with equal probability until he gets a treat. (The dog's memory isn't so good, so he might pick the third trainer repeatedly!) What is the expected number of times the dog will jump before getting a treat?

2009 Math Prize For Girls Problems, 12

Jenny places 100 pennies on a table, 30 showing heads and 70 showing tails. She chooses 40 of the pennies at random (all different) and turns them over. That is, if a chosen penny was showing heads, she turns it to show tails; if a chosen penny was showing tails, she turns it to show heads. At the end, what is the expected number of pennies showing heads?

2013 Stanford Mathematics Tournament, 3

Suppose two equally strong tennis players play against each other until one player wins three games in a row. The results of each game are independent, and each player will win with probability $\frac{1}{2}$. What is the expected value of the number of games they will play?

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?

2021 JHMT HS, 5

The average of all ten-digit base-ten positive integers $\underline{d_9} \ \underline{d_8} \ldots \underline{d_1} \ \underline{d_0}$ that satisfy the property $|d_i - i| \leq 1$ for all $i \in \{0, 1, \ldots, 9\}$ is $\tfrac{p}{q}$, where $p$ and $q$ are relatively prime integers. Compute the remainder when $p + q$ is divided by $10^6.$

2012 NIMO Problems, 8

Bob has invented the Very Normal Coin (VNC). When the VNC is flipped, it shows heads $\textstyle\frac{1}{2}$ of the time and tails $\textstyle\frac{1}{2}$ of the time - unless it has yielded the same result five times in a row, in which case it is guaranteed to yield the opposite result. For example, if Bob flips five heads in a row, then the next flip is guaranteed to be tails. Bob flips the VNC an infinite number of times. On the $n$th flip, Bob bets $2^{-n}$ dollars that the VNC will show heads (so if the second flip shows heads, Bob wins $\$0.25$, and if the third flip shows tails, Bob loses $\$0.125$). Assume that dollars are infinitely divisible. Given that the first flip is heads, the expected number of dollars Bob is expected to win can be expressed as $\frac{a}{b}$ for relatively prime positive integers $a, b$. Compute $100a + b$. [i]Proposed by Lewis Chen[/i]

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?

2005 USAMTS Problems, 2

Anna writes a sequence of integers starting with the number 12. Each subsequent integer she writes is chosen randomly with equal chance from among the positive divisors of the previous integer (including the possibility of the integer itself). She keeps writing integers until she writes the integer 1 for the first time, and then she stops. One such sequence is \[ 12, 6, 6, 3, 3, 3, 1. \] What is the expected value of the number of terms in Anna’s sequence?

2015 BMT Spring, 6

There are $30$ cities in the empire of Euleria. Every week, Martingale City runs a very well-known lottery. $900$ visitors decide to take a trip around the empire, visiting a different city each week in some random order. $3$ of these cities are inhabited by mathematicians, who will talk to all visitors about the laws of statistics. A visitor with this knowledge has probability $0$ of buying a lottery ticket, else they have probability $0.5$ of buying one. What is the expected number of visitors who will play the Martingale Lottery?

2005 USAMTS Problems, 3

We play a game. The pot starts at $\$0$. On every turn, you flip a fair coin. If you flip heads, I add $\$100$ to the pot. If you flip tails, I take all of the money out of the pot, and you are assessed a "strike". You can stop the game before any flip and collect the contents of the pot, but if you get 3 strikes, the game is over and you win nothing. Find, with proof, the expected value of your winnings if you follow an optimal strategy.

1970 Putnam, A6

Three numbers are chosen independently at random, one from each of the three intervals $[0, L_i ]$ ($i=1,2,3$). If the distribution of each random number is uniform with respect to the length of the interval it is chosen from, determine the expected value of the smallest number chosen.

KoMaL A Problems 2019/2020, A. 759

We choose a random permutation of $1,2,\ldots,n$ with uniform distribution. Prove that the expected value of the length of the longest increasing subsequence in the permutation is at least $\sqrt{n}.$

2014 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament, 11

Two fair octahedral dice, each with the numbers $1$ through $8$ on their faces, are rolled. Let $N$ be the remainder when the product of the numbers showing on the two dice is divided by $8$. Find the expected value of $N$.

2015 BMT Spring, 1

A fair $6$-sided die is repeatedly rolled until a $1, 4, 5$, or $6$ is rolled. What is the expected value of the product of all the rolls?

2012 NIMO Problems, 3

In chess, there are two types of minor pieces, the bishop and the knight. A bishop may move along a diagonal, as long as there are no pieces obstructing its path. A knight may jump to any lattice square $\sqrt{5}$ away as long as it isn't occupied. One day, a bishop and a knight were on squares in the same row of an infinite chessboard, when a huge meteor storm occurred, placing a meteor in each square on the chessboard independently and randomly with probability $p$. Neither the bishop nor the knight were hit, but their movement may have been obstructed by the meteors. The value of $p$ that would make the expected number of valid squares that the bishop can move to and the number of squares that the knight can move to equal can be expressed as $\frac{a}{b}$ for relatively prime positive integers $a, b$. Compute $100a + b$. [i]Proposed by Lewis Chen[/i]

2010 ELMO Shortlist, 8

A tree $T$ is given. Starting with the complete graph on $n$ vertices, subgraphs isomorphic to $T$ are erased at random until no such subgraph remains. For what trees does there exist a positive constant $c$ such that the expected number of edges remaining is at least $cn^2$ for all positive integers $n$? [i]David Yang.[/i]

2008 Pre-Preparation Course Examination, 5

A permutation $ \pi$ is selected randomly through all $ n$-permutations. a) if \[ C_a(\pi)\equal{}\mbox{the number of cycles of length }a\mbox{ in }\pi\] then prove that $ E(C_a(\pi))\equal{}\frac1a$ b) Prove that if $ \{a_1,a_2,\dots,a_k\}\subset\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ the probability that $ \pi$ does not have any cycle with lengths $ a_1,\dots,a_k$ is at most $ \frac1{\sum_{i\equal{}1}^ka_i}$

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)$?

2005 MOP Homework, 2

A regular $2004$-sided polygon is given, with all of its diagonals drawn. After some sides and diagonals are removed, every vertex has at most five segments coming out of it. Prove that one can color the vertices with two colors such that at least $\frac{3}{5}$ of the remaining segments have ends with different colors.

2013 Stanford Mathematics Tournament, 20

Ben is throwing darts at a circular target with diameter 10. Ben never misses the target when he throws a dart, but he is equally likely to hit any point on the target. Ben gets $\lceil 5-x \rceil$ points for having the dart land $x$ units away from the center of the target. What is the expected number of points that Ben can earn from throwing a single dart? (Note that $\lceil y \rceil$ denotes the smallest integer greater than or equal to $y$.)

2014 Math Prize For Girls Problems, 10

An ant is on one face of a cube. At every step, the ant walks to one of its four neighboring faces with equal probability. What is the expected (average) number of steps for it to reach the face opposite its starting face?

2014 NIMO Summer Contest, 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]

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]