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 ([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:
(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 for 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?