Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 ia Paper 2 11F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Use the positive-support geometric distribution, for , . Differentiating the geometric series suppliesFor the jar, let be the waiting time to remove one red ball when exactly red balls remain. Every draw has success probability , so is geometric with that parameter. The are independent: after each success, fresh independent draws begin a new stage, and its conditional waiting distribution depends only on the deterministic count , not on earlier waiting times. Replacing a green ball leaves that stage's count unchanged.
Thus the coupon collector problem decomposition is , andThis is the coupon collector waiting-time variance. For , the formula correctly gives zero variance and a deterministic one-minute completion.