SOLUTION: A local club sells 100 tickets every week from which a winning ticket is randomly selected. Assume that every week all 100 tickets are sold and we start afresh the next week with a

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Question 1200991: A local club sells 100 tickets every week from which a winning ticket is randomly selected. Assume that every week all 100 tickets are sold and we start afresh the next week with a new lottery. If each ticket costs €3 and you buy 2 tickets every week, how much would you expect to pay overall on tickets by the time you win the lottery for the first time?
Answer by ikleyn(52813) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
.
A local club sells 100 tickets every week from which a winning ticket is randomly selected.
Assume that every week all 100 tickets are sold and we start afresh the next week with a new lottery.
If each ticket costs €3 and you buy 2 tickets every week, how much would you expect to pay overall
on tickets by the time you win the lottery for the first time?
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From week to week, at each lottery, we have a binomial experiment 
with the probability of the success (winning at each new week/lottery) of 


    p = P(1st ticket wins) + P(1st ticket does not win, but the 2nd ticket wins) = 

      = %281%2F100%29 + %2899%2F100%29%2A%281%2F99%29 = 1%2F100+%2B+1%2F100 = 2%2F100 = 1%2F50 = 0.02.


Repeating this experiment every week (formally, infinitely many times) and paying 2*3 = 6 euros 
every week for 2 tickets, we get the mathematical expectation of the amount of the money 
we pay overall on tickets by the time you win the lottery for the first time


    E = 6p + 12(1-p)*p + 18(1-p)^2*p + 24(1-p)^3*p + 30(1-p)^4)*p + . . . =

      = 6p*(1 + 2(1-p) + 3(1-p)^2 + 4(1-p)^3 + 5(1-p)^4 + . . . ).


The formula of the infinite sum in the brackets is classic

        1 + 2*x + 3x^2 + 4x^3 + 5x^4 + . . . = 1%2F%281-x%29%5E2.   (*)


You may find its proof everywhere (see the relevant info at the end of my post).


In our case, x = 1-p, and we get

    E = %286p%29%2A%281%2F%281-%281-p%29%29%5E2%29 = %286p%29%2A%281%2Fp%29%5E2 = 6%2Fp = 6%2F%28%281%2F50%29%29 = 6*50 = 300 euros.


ANSWER.  You expect to pay 300 euros overall on tickets by the time you win the lottery for the first time.

Solved.

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Below is the link to the formula (*), first one, which I found in the Internet.
https://www.toppr.com/ask/en-us/question/find-the-sum-of-the-series-1-2x-3x2-4x3-dotsgiven-that/

You may find many sources for it, and, without any doubts, you may find it
in any serious textbook on combinatorics - it is like a PREREQUISITE for solving this problem.