6.3 Wrong again?
Suppose you have a very faulty calculator that does not always compute the correct result.
If the probability of getting the wrong answer is p, the probability of getting the correct answer is 1 − p. This called the complementary probability. Assuming there is no connection between the attempts, the probability of getting the wrong answer two times in a row is p2 and the probability of getting the correct answer two times in a row is (1 − p)2.
Question 6.3.1
Compute p2 and (1 − p)2 for p = 0, p = 0.5, and p = 1.0.
To make this useful, we want the probability of failure p to be non-zero.
For n independent attempts, the probability of getting the wrong answer is pn. Let’s suppose p = 0.6. We get the wrong answer 60% of the time in many attempts. We get the correct answer 40% of the time.
After 10 attempts, the probability of having gotten the wrong answer every time is 0.610 ...
