Electronic Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

New Orleans, Louisiana, March 12-15, 2009

Paper S006

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, ISBN 0-321-68983-6, Copyright (C) 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc.


Using Maple to Explore the Runs-of-Heads Coin Tossing Problem

Joel C. Fowler


Southern Polytechnic State University

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ABSTRACT

Determining the probability of k consecutive heads in n flips of a fair coin has been studied, but most closed-form results are asymptotic. We examine how Maple can be used at a student project level to study the problem and find exact answers to some naturally occurring questions.

Keyword(s): probability, Maple