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jmc

counting and probability senior

Problem

Jackie and Phil have two fair coins and a third coin that comes up heads with probability . Jackie flips the three coins, and then Phil flips the three coins. Let be the probability that Jackie gets the same number of heads as Phil, where and are relatively prime positive integers. Find .
Solution
This can be solved quickly and easily with generating functions. Let represent flipping tails. The generating functions for these coins are ,,and in order. The product is . ( means there are ways to get heads, eg there are ways to get heads, and therefore tail, here.) The sum of the coefficients squared (total number of possible outcomes, squared because the event is occurring twice) is and the sum of the squares of each coefficient (the sum of the number of ways that each coefficient can be chosen by the two people) is . The probability is then . (Notice the relationship between the addends of the numerator here and the cases in the following solution.)
Final answer
515