Waiting time to observe both Bernoulli outcomes

ID: waiting-time-to-observe-both-bernoulli-outcomes

In independent trials with two outcomes of probabilities and , let include the first trial and the trial that first completes the pair. Conditional on the first outcome, has a geometric distribution of parameter or , with mixture weights . The law of total expectation and law of total variance give
The final term in the unsimplified variance is the variance of the two conditional means; omitting it is incorrect unless . Both outcomes must have positive probability for these finite formulas.

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