Suppose that you are gambling against an infinitely rich adversary and at each stage you either win or lose 1 unit with respective probabilities p and 1 − p. Show that the probability that you eventually go broke is 1 if p12and(qp)iif p>12where q = 1 − p and i is your initial fortune.

Short Answer

Expert verified

This proves the statement.

Step by step solution

01

Given information

We know from Example 4jit's clear that

Pn,m=pPn-1,m+(1-p)Pn,m-1

where symbols have their usual meaning.

02

Step 2

Finally we obtain -

Pn,m=k=nm+n-1m+n-1kpk(1-p)m+n-1-k

Therefore we have, as the no. of trial tends to infinity, we get

P=1;p12qpi;p>12

where(m+n)

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