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Someone shoots free throws. He/She made the first one and missed the second one. From the third shot, the probability of hitting the ball equals to the free throw percentage he/she made before it. For example, if the made 87 out of 100 tries. Then the probability of making the next one is 87/100.

What is the probability of the person making the n th? Does it matter whether he makes the n-1 th free throws?

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    I'm thinking that the question is symmetric, so the probability will be $1/2$. – Milten Mar 28 '19 at 21:57
  • Oh, so you are looking for a conditional probability $P(X_n=1 \mid X_{n-1}=1)$? I'll have to think about it... – Milten Mar 28 '19 at 22:44
  • @YellowRiver - how did you come up with the formula for $P(H_5 | H_4)$? I did some messy back-of-envelop calculations and came up with $2/3$... In any case, it surely isn't $1/2$ just by the "runaway" nature of the problem. – antkam Mar 29 '19 at 20:21
  • I modelled the system with a matrix, and found two things: The number of hits after $n$ throws is always uniformly distributed! (I tested up to $n=9$). This implies that $P(H_n|H_{n-1}) = 2/3$ for all $n$. (This I tested up to $n=11$). I'm sure there are nice simple arguments for these claims. – Milten Mar 29 '19 at 22:29
  • My calculation goes like this for $n=5$: $P(H_5|H_4) = P(H_5 \cap H_4) / P(H_4)$. $P(H_4) = 1/2$ (by symmetry) and $P(H_5 \cap H_4) = \frac12\cdot \frac23\cdot \frac34 + \frac12\cdot\frac13\cdot\frac24 = 1/3$. So $P(H_5|H_4) = 2/3$. Do you guys agree? – Milten Mar 29 '19 at 22:34

2 Answers2

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I will work out the probability of making the $(n+1)$'th throw, given that they made the $n$'th thow. Let $H_n$ be the event that they hit on the $n$'th shot, and let $K_n$ be the total number of hits after $n$ shots.

I will first prove by induction, that after $n$ throws there is an equal probability of having any number of hits. I.e., we have $P(K_n=k) = \frac{1}{n-1}$ for all $1\le k \le n-1$.

The case $n=2$ is trivial. Assume $n\ge3$. We can get $K_{n+1}=k$ in two ways: Hitting after $k-1$ hits, or missing after $k$ hits. This means: $$ P(K_{n+1}=k) = \frac{1}{n-1} \cdot \frac{k-1}{n} + \frac{1}{n-1} \cdot \frac{n-k}{n} = \frac{1}{n} $$

Note that this works even for the edge cases $k=1$ and $k=n$. Now we come back to the original problem. We want to work out: $$ P(H_{n+1}|H_n) = \frac{P(H_{n+1} \cap H_{n})}{P(H_{n})} $$

for $n\ge 3$. By the symmetry of the setup, we have simply $P(H_{n})=1/2$. We can calculate $P(H_{n+1} \cap H_{n})$ by splitting up in the cases for $K_{n-1}$: $$ \begin{split} P(H_{n+1} \cap H_{n}) &= \sum_{k=1}^{n-2} \frac{1}{n-2} \cdot \frac{k}{n-1}\cdot\frac{k+1}{n} = \frac{1}{n(n-1)(n-2)} \left(\sum_{k=1}^{n-2} k(k+1)\right) \\ &= \frac{1}{n(n-1)(n-2)} \cdot \frac{n(n-1)(n-2)}{3} = \frac13 \end{split} $$

So in the end we get $$ P(H_{n+1}|H_n) = \frac{1/3}{1/2} = \frac23 $$

Note that the result is independent of $n$!

Edit:

On antkam's suggestion, I'll prove my observation in the comments. I claim that all sequences of $n$ shots that have the same number of hits are equally likely. (This can actually be proven from the property I proved inductively above, but I'll do it the other way round). For example $P(HHMM) = P(HMMH) = P(MHMH) = \ldots$, where $H$ is a hit and $M$ is a miss. Since the first two shots are fixed, the sequences begin at the third shot. This is interesting, because while there are less ways to get a very high or low number of hits, each of those sequences are more likely because of the setup. These tendencies exactly cancel out to give the uniform distribution of $K_n$.

My precise claim is this: $$ P(S_3S_4\cdots S_{n+1}) = \frac{k!(n-k-1)!}{n!} $$ for any $n+1 \ge 3$, where $S_i$ is the outcome of the $i$'th shot (hit or miss), and $k$ is the total number hits.

Let $p_n = P(S_n = H)$ and $q_n = P(S_n = M)$. Note that we can write $$ P(S_3S_4\cdots S_{n+1}) = \prod_{S_i=H}p_i \cdot \prod_{S_i=M}q_i $$ We have $p_i=\frac{K_i}{i-1}$ and $q_i=\frac{i-1-K_i}{i-1}$. Since the sequence goes from the third to the $(n+1)$'th shot, we get a denominator of $n!$ when we multiply all the probabilities.

Let's consider the numerator. If we hit on the $i$'th shot ($S_i = H$), then $$ p_{i+1} = \frac{K_i+1}{i}, \quad q_{i+1}=\frac{i-(K_i+1)}{i} $$

and if $S_i = M$: $$ p_{i+1} = \frac{K_i}{i}, \quad q_{i+1}=\frac{i-K_i}{i} $$

We see that when we hit, the numerator of $p$ goes up by 1, and when we miss, the numerator of $q$ goes up by 1. Meanwhile the other numerators are unchanged. Note that $p_3 = q_3 = 1/2$, so they both start with a numerator of 1. Thus, multiplying all the numerators together, we get $k!(n-k-1)!$, which proves the claim.

So how does this get us the uniform distribution of $K_n$? If $K_{n+1} = k$, then the sequence of $n-1$ shots will have $k$ hits. There are $\binom{n-1}{k}$ such sequences, all equally likely, so we rediscover the result that: $$ P(K_{n+1}=k) = \frac{k!(n-k-1)!}{n!}\cdot \binom{n-1}{k} = \frac{k!(n-k-1)!}{n!} \cdot \frac{(n-1)!}{k!(n-k-1)!} = \frac{1}{n} $$

Milten
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  • Although it is interesting to see the uniform distribution of $K_n$, I would love to see an answer that doesn't calculate those probabilities. I will add that I came across even more symmetry while thinking about the problem: It seems that any way to get $k$ hits after $n$ throws is equally likely. E.g. we have $P(HMMHH) = P(HHHMM) = P(MHMMH) = \ldots$, where $H$ is hit and $M$ is miss. I haven't proven this. – Milten Mar 29 '19 at 23:49
  • I don't think they are equally likely. The denominator of the probability is always n! and different consequences of hitting the ball($HHHMM$ or $MHMMH$) clearly lead to different results in the numerator. – YellowRiver Mar 30 '19 at 00:51
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    Oops, that was a typo - there has to be the same number of $H$'s. I believe the probability will always be $k!(n-k)!/(n+1)!$. This cancels out nicely with a binomial coefficient counting the number of ways to get exactly $k$ hits after $n$ shots. – Milten Mar 30 '19 at 01:04
  • may i suggest you edit your answer and add your last comment to it, and maybe flesh it out a bit? that observation is really the key to why $P(K_{n+1} = k) = 1/n$ for all $k$. the induction is a nice proof, but it really doesnt tell us why :) – antkam Mar 30 '19 at 03:24
  • @antkam I've edited the answer. Hope it makes sense :) – Milten Mar 30 '19 at 18:35
  • Hi Milten, your answer is brilliant. Could you help me with my confusion? Originally when I calculated $(X_5 = H |X_4 = H)$, I first set $X_4 = H$. Then I have two scenarios. I could either get $HMMHH$ or $HMHHH$. I ended up getting a probability of $1/2 * 1/2 + 1/2 * 3/4 = 5/8$. What is wrong in my steps? – YellowRiver Mar 31 '19 at 20:24
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    I initially got the same answer as you actually, until I turned to the definition of conditional probability. Your method looks like the law of total probability, but the law looks different with conditional probabilities. We actually have $P(H_5|H_4) = P(H_5|H_4\cap K_3=1)P(K_3=1|H_4)$ $ + P(H_5|H_4\cap K_3=2)P(K_3=2|H_4)$. Now $P(K_3=k|H_4)$ can be worked out with Baye's rule to be $k/3$. So if you replace the two $(1/2)$'s in your expression with $1/3$ and $2/3$, then you get the correct answer of $2/3$. – Milten Apr 01 '19 at 07:47
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    (You can find the formula on the wiki page for Law of Total Probability). I think what is wrong with your way intuitively, is that when we now $X_4 = H$, it changes not only the probabilities after, but also before the fourth throw: If we hit on $n$, it is more likely that we had a high number of hits just before. – Milten Apr 01 '19 at 07:51
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Technically if he made the first one, he could not fail the next one since he did 1 out 1 and this success probability was $100\%$.

Kandinskij
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