Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/ia/paper-2/11f/a/solution

Let for a Galton-Watson process starting from one ancestor. Conditional on , extinction by generation requires independent descendant processes to be extinct by generation , so
Because zero is absorbing, , the eventual extinction probability, and continuity gives . If is any fixed point, monotonicity of and give inductively. Thus is the smallest nonnegative fixed point.
Here . Every individual has at least one child, so . The offspring mean is , hence

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