A prisoner is trapped in a cell containing three doors. The ?rst door leads to a tunnel that returns him to his cell after two days of travel. The second leads to a tunnel that returns him to his cell after three days of travel. The third door leads immediately to freedom.
(a) Assuming that the prisoner will always select doors 1, 2, and 3 with probabilities 0.5, 0.3, 0.2, what is the expected number of days until he reaches freedom?
(b) Assuming that the prisoner is always equally likely to choose among those doors that he has not used, what is the expected number of days until he reaches freedom? (In this version, for instance, if the prisoner initially tries door 1, then when he returns to the cell, he will now select only from doors 2 and 3.)
(c) For parts (a) and (b) ?nd the variance of the number of days until the prisoner reaches freedom.