Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament #0ime

Harvard-MIT Mathematics TournamentHard

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Understand the scale

Scale 0.5: Easiest math competition problems, often solvable even for early middle school students without experience. 1: Problems strictly for beginners, often at a moderate middle school level. 1.5: Problems for stronger beginner students, on the level of the middling problems in most middle school contests. 2: For motivated beginners, harder questions from the previous categories. 2.5: More advanced beginner problems, hardest questions from previous categories. 3: Early intermediate problems that require more creative thinking. 3.5: Tougher early intermediate problems that consistently stretch into higher-level creative thinking or conceptual knowledge. 4: Intermediate-level problems. 4.5: Upper intermediate problems approaching the upper bound for non-invitational sprint math competitions. 5: More difficult AIME problems or simple proof-based Olympiad-style problems. 6: High-level AIME-styled questions or introductory Olympiad-level questions. 7: Tougher Olympiad-level questions, may require more technical knowledge. 8: High-level Olympiad-level questions. 9: Expert Olympiad-level questions. 9.5: The hardest problems appearing on Olympiads which the strongest students could reasonably solve. 10: Historically notorious problems, generally unsuitable for even very hard competitions because they are exceedingly tedious, long, and difficult.

Problem

Problem:

Bob the bomb-defuser has stumbled upon an active bomb. He opens it up, and finds the red and green wires conveniently located for him to cut. Being a seasoned member of the bomb-squad, Bob quickly determines that it is the green wire that he should cut, and puts his wirecutters on the green wire. But just before he starts to cut, the bomb starts to count down, ticking every second. Each time the bomb ticks, starting at time $t=15$ seconds, Bob panics and has a certain chance to move his wirecutters to the other wire. However, he is a rational man even when panicking, and has a $\frac{1}{2 t^{2}}$ chance of switching wires at time $t$ , regardless of which wire he is about to cut. When the bomb ticks at $t=1$ , Bob cuts whatever wire his wirecutters are on, without switching wires. What is the probability that Bob cuts the green wire?