Liam writes the number $0$ on a board, then performs a series of turns. Each turn, he chooses a nonzero integer so that for every nonzero integer $N,$ he chooses $N$ with $3^{- |N|}$ probability. He adds his chosen integer $N$ to the last number written on the board, yielding a new number. He writes the new number on the board and uses it for the next turn. Liam repeats the process until either $8$ or $9$ is written on the board, at which point he stops. Given that Liam eventually stopped, find the probability the last number he wrote on the board was $9.$

Alice and Bob are playing in an eight-player single-elimination rock-paper-scissors tournament. In the first round, all players are paired up randomly to play a match. Each round after that, the winners of the previous round are paired up randomly. After three rounds, the last remaining player is considered the champion. Ties are broken with a coin flip. Given that Alice always plays rock, Bob always plays paper, and everyone else always plays scissors, what is the probability that Alice is crowned champion? Note that rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.

Alice and Bob find themselves on a coordinate plane at time $t=0$ at $A(1,0)$ and $B(-1,0)$ respectively. They have no sense of direction, but they want to find each other. They each pick a direction independently and with uniform random probability. Both Alice and Bob travel at a constant speed of $1 \frac{unit}{min}$ in their chosen directions. They continue on their straight line paths forever, each hoping to catch sight of the other. They both have a $1$ unit radius of view; they can see something if and only if its distance from them is at most $1$ unit. What is the probability they never see each other?

$32$ teams, ranked $1$ through $32$, enter a basketball tournament that works as follows: the teams are randomly paired and in each pair, the team that loses is out of the competition. The remaining $16$ teams are randomly paired, and so on, until there is a winner. A higher ranked team always wins against a lower-ranked team. If the probability that the team ranked $3$ (the third-best team) is one of the last four teams remaining can be written in simplest form as $\dfrac{m}{n}$, compute $m+n$.

In the set of $20$ elements $\{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, A, B, C, D, J, K, L, U, X, Y , Z\}$ we have made a random sequence of $28$ throws. What is the probability that the sequence $CUBA \ JULY \ 1987$ appears in this order in the sequence already thrown?

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]

A box contains exactly five chips, three red and two white. Chips are randomly removed one at a time without replacement until all the red chips are drawn or all the white chips are drawn. What is the probability that the last chip drawn is white? $ \displaystyle \textbf{(A)} \ \frac {3}{10} \qquad \textbf{(B)} \ \frac {2}{5} \qquad \textbf{(C)} \ \frac {1}{2} \qquad \textbf{(D)} \ \frac {3}{5} \qquad \textbf{(E)} \ \frac {7}{10}$

Consider $ 8$ points that are a knight’s move away from the origin (i.e., the eight points $\{(2, 1)$ , $(2, -1)$ , $(1, 2)$ , $(1, -2)$ , $(-1, 2)$ , $(-1, -2)$ , $(-2, 1)$, $(-2, -1)\}$). Each point has probability $\frac12$ of being visible. What is the expected value of the area of the polygon formed by points that are visible? (If exactly $0, 1, 2$ points appear, this area will be zero.)

A jar has 10 red candies and 10 blue candies. Terry picks two candies at random, then Mary picks two of the remaining candies at random. Given that the probability that they get the same color combination, irrespective of order, is $m/n$, where $m$ and $n$ are relatively prime positive integers, find $m+n$.

The game of backgammon has a "doubling" cube, which is like a standard 6-faced die except that its faces are inscribed with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64, respectively. After rolling the doubling cube four times at random, we let $a$ be the value of the first roll, $b$ be the value of the second roll, $c$ be the value of the third roll, and $d$ be the value of the fourth roll. What is the probability that $\frac{a + b}{c + d}$ is the average of $\frac{a}{c}$ and $\frac{b}{d}$ ?

Dave's Amazing Hotel has $3$ floors. If you press the up button on the elevator from the $3$rd floor, you are immediately transported to the $1$st floor. Similarly, if you press the down button from the $1$st floor, you are immediately transported to the $3$rd floor. Dave gets in the elevator at the $1$st floor and randomly presses up or down at each floor. After doing this $482$ times, the probability that Dave is on the first floor can be expressed as $\frac{m}{n}$ where $m$ and $n$ are relatively prime positive integers. What is the remainder when $m+n$ is divided by $1000$? $\text{(A) }136\qquad\text{(B) }294\qquad\text{(C) }508\qquad\text{(D) }692\qquad\text{(E) }803$

A box contains 3 red chips and 2 green chips. Chips are drawn randomly, one at a time without replacement, until all 3 of the reds are drawn or until both green chips are drawn. What is the probability that the 3 reds are drawn? $\textbf{(A) }\frac{3}{10}\qquad\textbf{(B) }\frac{2}{5}\qquad\textbf{(C) }\frac{1}{2}\qquad\textbf{(D) }\frac{3}{5}\qquad \textbf{(E) }\frac{7}{10}$

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 $Y$?

There is a set of $2n$ chips of $n$ different colors, two chips of each color. The chips are randomly placed in a row. Prove that the probability that there are two adjacent chips of the same color in a row is greater than $1/2$. [i]From the folklore[/i]

A frog is jumping on $N$ stones which are numbered from $1$ to $N$ from left to right. The frog is jumping to the previous stone (to the left) with probability $p$ and is jumping to the next stone (to the right) with probability $1-p$. If the frog has jumped to the left from the leftmost stone or to the right from the rightmost stone, it will fall into the water. The frog is initially on the leftmost stone. If $p< \tfrac 13$, show that the frog will fall into the water from the rightmost stone with a probability higher than $\tfrac 12$.

Lazim rolls two $24$-sided dice. From the two rolls, Lazim selects the die with the highest number. $N$ is an integer not greater than $24$. What is the largest possible value for $N$ such that there is a more than $50$% chance that the die Lazim selects is larger than or equal to $N$?

Each citizen in a town knows at least $ 30$% of the remaining citizens. A citizen votes in elections if he/she knows at least one candidate. Prove that it is possible to schedule elections with two candidates for the mayor of the city so that at least $ 50$% of the citizen can vote.

Maya lists all the positive divisors of $ 2010^2$. She then randomly selects two distinct divisors from this list. Let $ p$ be the probability that exactly one of the selected divisors is a perfect square. The probability $ p$ can be expressed in the form $ \frac{m}{n}$, where $ m$ and $ n$ are relatively prime positive integers. Find $ m \plus{} n$.

A fair six-sided die is rolled five times. The probability that the five die rolls form an increasing sequence where each value is strictly larger than the one that preceded can be written in the form $m/n$ , where $m$ and $n$ are relatively prime positive integers. Compute $m + n$.

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.

A student puts $2010$ red balls and $1957$ blue balls into a box. Weiqing draws randomly from the box one ball at a time without replacement. She wins if, at anytime, the total number of blue balls drawn is more than the total number of red balls drawn. Assuming Weiqing keeps drawing balls until she either wins or runs out, ompute the probability that she eventually wins.

Two eight-sided dice each have faces numbered $ 1$ through $ 8$. When the dice are rolled, each face has an equal probability of appearing on the top. What is the probability that the product of the two top numbers is greater than their sum? $ \textbf{(A)}\ \frac{1}{2}\qquad \textbf{(B)}\ \frac{47}{64}\qquad \textbf{(C)}\ \frac{3}{4}\qquad \textbf{(D)}\ \frac{55}{64}\qquad \textbf{(E)}\ \frac{7}{8}$

From a bag containing 5 pairs of socks, each pair a different color, a random sample of 4 single socks is drawn. Any complete pairs in the sample are discarded and replaced by a new pair draw from the bag. The process continues until the bag is empty or there are 4 socks of different colors held outside the bag. What is the probability of the latter alternative?

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]

A pharmaceutical company produces a disease test that has a $95\%$ accuracy rate on individuals who actually have an infection, and a $90\%$ accuracy rate on individuals who do not have an infection. They use their test on a population of mathletes, of which $2\%$ actually have an infection. If a test concludes that a mathlete has an infection, then the probability that the mathlete actually does have an infection is $\tfrac{a}{b},$ where $a$ and $b$ are relatively prime positive integers. Find $a + b.$