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NCERT Exemplar · Q4

Q.An experiment consists of rolling a die until a 2 appears.

(i) How many elements of the sample space correspond to the event that the 2 appears on the kkth roll of the die?
(ii) How many elements of the sample space correspond to the event that the 2 appears not later than the kkth roll of the die? [Hint:
(a) First (k−1)(k-1) rolls have 5 outcomes each and kkth roll should result in 1 outcome.
(b) 1+5+52+…+5k−11 + 5 + 5^2 + \ldots + 5^{k-1}.]
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The key idea is to treat each roll as an independent trial with 5 "failure" outcomes (not 2) and 1 "success" outcome (2). For part (i), the first k−1k-1 rolls must avoid 2, and the kkth roll must be 2 — giving 5k−15^{k-1} elements. For part (ii), we sum over all possible success rolls from 1 to kk, giving 5k−14\frac{5^k - 1}{4} elements.

Why this works

When you roll a fair die, each roll has 6 equally likely outcomes: {1,2,3,4,5,6}\{1,2,3,4,5,6\}. The experiment stops the moment a 2 appears. So the sample space consists of all finite sequences of rolls where the last roll is a 2, and none of the earlier rolls are 2.

This is a classic "waiting time" problem. The structure is simple: before the 2 appears, every roll must be one of the other 5 numbers. Once the 2 shows up, the sequence ends.


Step-by-step solution

1. Understanding the event for part (i)

We want the number of sequences where the 2 appears exactly on the kkth roll.

That means:

  • Rolls 1,2,…,k−11, 2, \dots, k-1: each must be not 2 — so each has 5 possible outcomes (1,3,4,5,61,3,4,5,6).
  • Roll kk: must be exactly 2 — only 1 outcome.

Since the choices for each roll are independent, the total number of such sequences is:

5×5×⋯×5⏟k−1 times×1=5k−1\underbrace{5 \times 5 \times \cdots \times 5}_{k-1 \text{ times}} \times 1 = 5^{k-1}

Tip

A common shortcut: think of it as "fill the first k−1k-1 positions with any of the 5 non-2 numbers, then force the last position to be 2." The count is simply 5k−15^{k-1}.

2. Answer for part (i)

The number of elements in the sample space where the 2 appears on the kkth roll is:

5k−1\boxed{5^{k-1}}


3. Understanding the event for part (ii)

Now we want the 2 to appear not later than the kkth roll. That means it could appear on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, …, or kkth roll.

These are mutually exclusive events — the 2 can't appear on two different rolls in the same sequence. So we simply add the counts for each possible success roll.

From part (i), the number of sequences where the 2 appears on the rrth roll is 5r−15^{r-1}.

So the total for rolls 11 through kk is:

1+5+52+⋯+5k−11 + 5 + 5^2 + \cdots + 5^{k-1} …

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