Problem

Most railroad cars are owned by individual railroad companies. When a car leaves its home railroad's trackage, it becomes part of a national pool of cars and can be used by other railroads. The rules governing the use of these pooled cars are designed to eventually return the car to the home trackage. A particular railroad found that each month $7 \%$ of its boxcars on the home trackage left to join the national pool and $73 \%$ of its boxcars in the national pool were returned to the home trackage. If these percentages remain'valid for a long period of time, what percentage of its boxcars can this railroad expect to have on its home trackage in the long run?

Answer

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Answer

Final Answer: The railroad can expect to have \(\boxed{91.25\%}\) of its boxcars on its home trackage in the long run.

Steps

Step 1 :We can model the situation as a Markov Chain with two states: 'Home' and 'Pool'. Each month, 7% of the boxcars transition from 'Home' to 'Pool', and 73% of the boxcars transition from 'Pool' to 'Home'. We want to find the steady state probabilities, which represent the long-term proportions of boxcars in each state.

Step 2 :Let's denote the long-term proportion of boxcars at 'Home' as \(h\) and at 'Pool' as \(p\).

Step 3 :We can write down the following system of equations based on the transition probabilities:

Step 4 :1. \(h = 0.93h + 0.73p\) (since 93% of the boxcars at 'Home' stay at 'Home' and 73% of the boxcars at 'Pool' move to 'Home')

Step 5 :2. \(h + p = 1\) (since the total proportion of boxcars must be 1)

Step 6 :We can solve this system of equations to find the values of \(h\) and \(p\).

Step 7 :The solution is \(h = 0.9125\) and \(p = 0.0875\).

Step 8 :Final Answer: The railroad can expect to have \(\boxed{91.25\%}\) of its boxcars on its home trackage in the long run.

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