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What are the odds against getting exactly two heads in three successive flips of

ID: 2959238 • Letter: W

Question

What are the odds against getting exactly two heads in three successive flips of a coin?

I'm stuck because I have trouble with probability as well. On this one I think the probability is 1/2 and so then I know that for ODDS in favor, the numerator and denominator have to equal the denominator of the probability and then you just flip the numerator and denominator of the ODDS in favor to get the ODDS against. ????
I may be thinking wrong because 1/2 probability would be 1/1 ODDS in favor and 1/1 ODDS against and that just doesn't seem right for some reason. Thanks for the help!

Explanation / Answer

Decide on possible outcomes.

In three successive flips, you have 8 possible outcomes.

HHH, HHT, HTT, THT, THH, TTH, HTH, TTT all with 1/8 probability. So you can get exactly 2 heads in 3 of these cases, i.e. getting exactly wo heads has probability 3/8.

Moe from there.

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