Two State Expected Hitting Time

Problem

In the chain [[1 - a, a], [b, 1 - b]] with a > 0, the expected number of steps to reach state 1 from state 0 is 1 / a.

Given a, return the expected hitting time.

Hint

Condition on the first step and solve the one-step recurrence.

case 1

in: [0.5]

expected: 2

case 2

in: [0.1]

expected: 10

case 3

in: [1]

expected: 1

Starter codePython

def two_state_expected_hitting_time(a):
    # Your code here
    pass

3 test cases · run your code against them in the editor