If I want to distribute 50 identical candies to 100 children, what is the expected number of candies a child with at least one candy has

averagecombinatorics

If I want to distribute 50 identical candies to 100 children, what is the expected number of candies a child with at least one candy has?

For example, if I give 24 candies to child A and 26 candies to child B, and don't give any candy to other 98 children, since only two children has nonzero candies, if this way the only way how I can distribute 50 identical candies to 100 children, the quantity I'm looking for would be 25.

I tried for an hour, and in the end came up with the following "solution":

Let $Q(k)$ be the average number of candies a child with at least one candy has provided that we distribute the candies only to $k$ children. Then I assumed that the average number of candies a child from this set has $50/k$, and there are $\binom{100}{k}$ different ways of selecting these set of children, so doing a weighted average, I got

$$
\frac{
\sum_{k=1}^{50} 50*(100!) / (k * (k!) * (100-k)!)} { \sum_{k=1}^{50} 100! / ((k!) * (100-k)!)} \approx 1.08481.
$$

Is my solution correct? If not, could you provide me with an detailed answer about how you solved it?

Best Answer

Pick any child, and let's say the number of candies he receives is $X$, so we want to find $E(X|X>0)$, i.e. $$E(X|X>0) = \sum_{x>0} x P(X=x | X >0)$$

Evidently $X$ has a Binomial distribution with $n=50$ and $p = 0.01$, so $$P(X = x) = \binom{50}{x} 0.01^x 0.99^{50-x}$$ for $0 \le x \le 50$. Now $$P(X=x | X>0) = \frac{P(X=x)}{P(X > 0)}$$ for $1 \le x \le 50$, and $P(X>0) = 1- P(X=0) = 1 -.99^{50}$, so $$E(X|X>0) = \sum_{x=1}^{50} \frac{x \binom{50}{x} 0.01^x 0.99^{50-x}}{1-.99^{50}}$$ We also have $$\sum_{x=1}^{50} x \binom{50}{x} 0.01^x 0.99^{50-x} = \sum_{x=0}^{50} x \binom{50}{x} 0.01^x 0.99^{50-x}$$ which is the expected value of a Binomial distribution, so the sum is $np = 50 \cdot 0.01 = 0.50$. Hence $$E(X | X>0) = \frac{0.50}{1-.99^{50}} = \boxed{1.26584}$$