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A, B, and C are evenly matched tennis players. Initially A and B play a set and the winner then plays C. This continues, with the winner always playing the waiting player, until one of the players has won two sets in a row. That player is then declared the overall winner. Find the probability that A is the overall winner.

          A, B, and C are evenly matched tennis players. Initially A and B play a set and the winner then plays C. This continues, with the winner always playing the waiting player, until one of the players has won two sets in a row. That player is then declared the overall winner. Find the probability that A is the overall winner.
        
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A, B, and C are evenly matched tennis players. Initially A and B play a set and the winner then plays C. This continues, with the winner always playing the waiting player, until one of the players has won two sets in a row. That player is then declared the overall winner. Find the probability that A is the overall winner.

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Elementary Statistics a Step by Step Approach
Elementary Statistics a Step by Step Approach
Allan G. Bluman 9th Edition
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A, B, and C are evenly matched tennis players. Initially A and B play a set and the winner then plays C. This continues, with the winner always playing the waiting player, until one of the players has won two sets in a row. That player is then declared the overall winner. Find the probability that A is the overall winner.
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Transcript

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00:01 All right, and your question, you're told that a, b, and c are evenly matched tennis players, and that a and b are going to play a match.
00:06 So i think this information here is going to be organized better in a tree diagram.
00:11 So i'm going to start with a tree diagram.
00:13 And the result of which is a wins, which i want to put a -w, or b wins.
00:20 And we're told they're evenly matched, so that probability occurs at 0 .5, 50 -50 chance.
00:26 Then whoever wins will play c so the next set of branches will go up here either a would win with 50 % chance or c would win with a 50 % chance and we continue this until one of the players has two wins so we already have a branch where a has two wins but there's other possibilities here that could occur if c won, then c is going to end up playing the player that was waiting, which would be b.
01:03 Now, c could win at a 0 .5 rate, or b could win at a 0 .5 rate.
01:12 Now, if c won, the game's over.
01:14 We don't go any further on these branches where we already have two wins.
01:19 But as you can see, the b branch, b only has one win now, and b would end up playing a.
01:25 Now, b could win the second time at 0 .5, which would end that branch.
01:32 We would have two bs or two wins for the b person, or a could win, and that would also end the branch, because that would be a second win.
01:45 Now, to find the probabilities of each of these branches, what we need to do is multiply out the branches.
01:50 So going out the top branch, 0 .5 times 0 .25 is 0 .25.
01:56 So that's our first branch.
01:58 The next branch, i'm just going to work my way down, would be 0 .5 to the third power, which would be 0 .125.
02:09 There were 3 .5s in that path.
02:14 Now, the next branch would be, these two are going to be equal because both branches have 4 .5s in them.
02:24 So 0 .5 to the 4th power will give you the probability for those branches.
02:32 0 .0 .0 .0625.
02:42 All right, that represents every possible outcome that started with a winning the first match.
02:48 Now we want to look at b.
02:50 Now, let's say b won that first match.
02:53 Then b is going to play c...
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