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Friday, May 10, 2013

Nine squares

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Question: There are 9 squares, 3 black and 6 red. In each turn, a square is chosen randomly and its color is then switched. The process continues until all squares have the same color. What is the probability that all squares are red at the end?

REDREDBLACK
BLACKREDRED
REDREDBLACK


Answer: Let Pk be the probability of all red at the end if currently there are k red squares. Note in that turn, there are k9 chance that a red square turns black and 9k9 chance that a black square turns red. Therefore Pk=k9Pk1+k9Pk+1,k=1,2,,8.P0=0,P9=1
Or in matrix notation, (P0P1P2P3P4P5P6P7P8P9)=(10000000001/908/9000000002/907/9000000003/906/9000000004/905/9000000005/904/9000000006/903/9000000007/902/9000000008/901/90000000001)(P0P1P2P3P4P5P6P7P8P9)
Hence (P0P1P2P3P4P5P6P7P8P9)=(035/83315/664325/664165/332167/332339/664349/66448/831).
Therefore the required probability is P6=339664 is just barely greater than 1/2.

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