Can you please introduce yourself in Introductions.
]]>This is the set of equations you'll need,
is the number of rounds you should survive with lives.Plugging into Wolfram|Alpha / pen+paper gives:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=R3 … 2B9R2%2F10
I guess you should accept that my head is a (not too good!) computer...
]]>http://www.mathisfunforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=15250
Agnishom's solution in post #5 is the only solution because it uses Mathematica.
]]>The expected time to absorption is given by t where the starting states are rows (shown in the first column).
B is the probability of ending in some absorbing state (first row) starting in some transient state (first column).
I will ask you some questions from the point of view given by EM:
1) How certain are you that you have the correct answer?
2) If I said that answer was incorrect, or that M was not getting the right answer, what would you reply?
]]>The correct answer is 1020.
chain = DiscreteMarkovProcess[
4, {{1, 0, 0, 0}, {0.1, 0, 0.9, 0}, {0, 0.1, 0, 0.9}, {0, 0, 0.1,
0.9}}];
Mean[FirstPassageTimeDistribution[chain, {1}]]
I think the answer is close to 1000
]]>In the beginning, a player is given 3 lives. At each round, he may either loose, with a 10% chance, and loose a life. Or, he may win, in which case, he gains a life. However, the last rule never lets him gain more than 3 lives.
The game ends when a player reaches 0 lives.
Calculate the expected number of rounds the player plays using an absorbing markov model
]]>