Make a fair coin from a biased coin | GeeksforGeeks
You are given a function foo() that represents a biased coin. When foo() is called, it returns 0 with 60% probability, and 1 with 40% probability. Write a new function that returns 0 and 1 with 50% probability each.
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You are given a function foo() that represents a biased coin. When foo() is called, it returns 0 with 60% probability, and 1 with 40% probability. Write a new function that returns 0 and 1 with 50% probability each.
The solution is similar to this post. If we can somehow get two cases with equal probability, then we are done. We call foo() two times. Both calls will return 0 with 60% probability. So the two pairs (0, 1) and (1, 0) will be generated with equal probability from two calls of foo(). Let us see how.
(0, 1): The probability to get 0 followed by 1 from two calls of foo() = 0.6 * 0.4 = 0.24
(1, 0): The probability to get 1 followed by 0 from two calls of foo() = 0.4 * 0.6 = 0.24
(1, 0): The probability to get 1 followed by 0 from two calls of foo() = 0.4 * 0.6 = 0.24
So the two cases appear with equal probability. The idea is to return consider only the above two cases, return 0 in one case, return 1 in other case. For other cases [(0, 0) and (1, 1)], recur until you end up in any of the above two cases.
int my_fun() { int val1 = foo(); int val2 = foo(); if (val1 == 0 && val2 == 1) return 0; // Will reach here with 0.24 probability if (val1 == 1 && val2 == 0) return 1; // // Will reach here with 0.24 probability return my_fun(); // will reach here with (1 - 0.24 - 0.24) probability}