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Question Directory
Coin Jar
Suppose you have a jar with 1000 coins. One of the coins in the jar is a double-header. You choose a coin at random and get 10 $H$s from 10 tosses. What is the probability that you chose the double-header?
This is a typical Bayes' Theorem problem. Recall that Bayes' Theorem is
$$
P(A|B) = \frac{P(A)}{P(B)} P(B|A).
$$
Let us denote the event of selecting the double-header as $\text{dh}$, and the event of throwing 10 $H$s as $10 H\text{s}$. We want to find the probability that the coin we selected was the double-header given that we threw 10 heads
$$
P(\text{dh} | 10 H\text{s}) = \frac{P(\text{dh})}{P(10H\text{s})} P(10 H\text{s} | \text{dh}).
$$
Clearly, the probability of throwing 10 heads given that we selected the double-header is
$$
P(10 H\text{s} | \text{dh}) = 1
$$
and we infer from the question that the probability of selecting the double-header is
$$
P(\text{dh}) = \frac{1}{1000}.
$$
We use the Law of Total Probability to calculate the probability of throwing 10 heads,
$$
P(10H\text{s}) = P(\text{dh})P(10 H\text{s} | \text{dh}) + P(\text{sh})P(10 H\text{s} | \text{sh})
$$
where
$$
P(\text{sh}) = \frac{999}{1000}
$$
is the probability of selecting a single-headed coin from the jar. The probability of flipping 10 heads with the single header is
$$
P(10 H\text{s} | \text{sh}) = \frac{1}{2^{10}}.
$$
Evaluating gives
$$
P(10H\text{s}) = \frac{1}{1000} + \frac{1}{2^{10}} \frac{999}{1000} = \frac{1.976}{1000}
$$
and plugging our results back into Bayes' Theorem gives
$$
P(\text{dh} | 10 H\text{s}) = \frac{1}{1.976} \approx 50.6\%.
$$