Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/ia/paper-2/9f/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ia Paper 2 9F Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
A probability space consists of a sample space , a sigma-algebra of events, and a probability measure satisfying:
- for every .
- .
- For pairwise disjoint events, .
For arbitrary events, Boole's inequality is . To prove it, replace each by . The are disjoint, have the same union, and satisfy . Countable additivity and monotonicity give . Finite unions are included by taking subsequent events empty.
Let be the th heads event. For every , the event of infinitely many heads lies inside . By the union bound, its probability is at most , which tends to zero. Thus the probability of infinitely many heads is . This is the First Borel-Cantelli lemma, and requires no independence of the coin tosses.
For the dice experiment there are ordered outcomes giving a sum of and giving , out of . Each trial therefore has , and irrelevant-outcome probability . By independence between trials, summing over the number of initial irrelevant outcomes givesThe geometric series also shows that one of the two relevant sums eventually appears almost surely. Equivalently, first-step analysis gives .
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