MathDB

Three lights are placed horizontally on a line on the ceiling. All the lights are initially off. Every second, Neil picks one of the three lights uniformly at random to switch: if it is off, he switches it on; if it is on, he switches it off. When a light is switched, any lights directly to the left or right of that light also get turned on (if they were off) or off (if they were on). The expected number of lights that are on after Neil has flipped switches three times can be expressed in the form

m/ n

, where

m

and

n

are relatively prime positive integers. Compute

m + n

Problem Statement