Practice Question: Linear Dynamical Systems

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An old printer has the following behavior:
  • If it jams printing a page, then there is a 40% chance it will jam printing the next page.
  • If it prints a page without jamming, then there is a 90% chance it will print the next page without jamming
  • When you first turn it on, it has a 90% chance of printing the first page without jamming
In this case you can write vn=(xn,yn)=\vec v_n=(x_n,y_n)= ([probability of jamming while printing page n], [probability of not jamming while printing page n])

Remember that these two probabilities should be positive quantities that sum to 1 = 100%.

You may use the fact that given the above information, the laws of probability dictate that:

xn+1=(0.4)xn+(0.1)ynx_{n+1}=(0.4)x_n+(0.1)y_n

(In other words, the probability of a jam at the next step is 40% if it jammed at the last step, and 10% if it didn't)

(a) Write down the matrix A and a vector v0\vec v_0for a linear dynamical system describing this scenario.

(b) What is the probability that it jams printing the third page?

(c) If I turn it on and then print a very long document, what percentage of pages can I expect to jam?
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