Abstract
Assume that N persons want to advance on a stairway. The rule is as follows: They start at level 1. The k ≥ 1 persons who advanced to the level j flip a (fair) coin; the persons with the “1” advance; the others (with a “0”) die. However, there is a demon supervising the game. Usually, he “consumes” one of the survivors. But, with a probability p, he resigns and does not interfere. (The demon can only interfere at levels 2 or larger.) The question is, how far can the party advance, on the average?
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Prodinger, H. (1993). How to Advance on a Stairway by Coin Flippings. In: Bergum, G.E., Philippou, A.N., Horadam, A.F. (eds) Applications of Fibonacci Numbers. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2058-6_47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2058-6_47
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