medium   Probability

Even Steven

A release-checked medium problem for training Probability.

Question

Steven and his friend are playing a game where the first person to flip a heads wins. Steven's friend sadly only has a biased coin with a probability of $0.4$ to get flip a heads. Since the friend is at a disadvantage, they decided that he would get the chance to flip first and then they alternate who flips their coin. Steven has a special coin where he can choose the probability it comes up heads. Because Steven is a fair man, he wants this game to be fair to both players. What probability of heads should Steven set his magical coin at to make this game fair?

Practice focus

This Probability problem is tagged Probability. State the random variables and conditioning information explicitly, then check the result against boundary cases before opening hints or a solution.

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