Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-43/1/c/solution

Here , so iteration gives
The negative-binomial series , valid for , normalizes this to
This is the negative binomial distribution counting failures before the th success, with success probability . The convention is specified because a negative-binomial variable is sometimes defined to count trials instead. Its count expected value is , and the Panjer recursion begins at . For this reduces to the failure-count geometric distribution.

New to topics? Read the docs here!