You are in a circle with 100 points labelled 0 - 99 clockwise. You start at 1 and can move left or right with equal probability. What is the expected time to reach $0$?
I attempted this by setting up a Markov chain recursive formula for the expectation at each point. For example: $E_i$ designates the expected number of steps to reach $0$ from point $i$. Hence, the first couple equations are:
$E_1 = \frac{1}{2} \times (1) + \frac{1}{2} \times (E_2 + 1) $
$E_2 = \frac{1}{2} \times (E_1 + 1) + \frac{1}{2} \times (E_3 + 1) $
You can expand this so on until point 99. However, I am having a hard time evaluating this.
Any advice?