I came across a puzzle on YouTube recently (spoiler).
You roll a fair dice until you get a 6. What is the expected number of rolls, including the roll of 6, conditioned on the event that all previous rolls were even numbers?
Questions:
Can you solve it without looking (honor system!)
(more important) Can you explain the correct intuition?
The video gives mathematical answer, which is totally fine, but the intuition of the inverse of 1/3 is hard to shake. What's the right way to think about this?
Edit: Getting a lot of incorrect answers!
The correct answer is NOT 3.
Here's some python code that demonstrates this easily (and the YouTube video has the mathematical proof too):
import random
runs = 1000
number=[]
while True:
if len(number)>=runs:
print(f"Expected number is {sum(number)/len(number):.2f}")
break
#Start a throw sequence:
seq=[]
while True:
throw = random.randint(1,6)
if throw%2==1:
#non conditioned
break
if throw==6:
number.append(len(seq)+1)
break
seq.append(throw)