Distribution for Fraction of Success in a Binomial Setting So the actual original question I am trying to solve is a little bit different than the title:
In a binomial setting with probability of success $p$, I keep examining observations until a fraction of success $a<f<b$ is reached. What is the probability of stopping after exactly $N$ observations. This is equivalent of asking $P(G_N|\bar{G_0},...,\bar{G_{N-1}})$ where $G_N\equiv a<f_N<b$.
As a first step to solve this, I want to compute $P(G_N)$, i.e. the probability of getting a fraction of success $a<f_N<b$ after $N$ observations. One way I can think of is to use a continuous estimation of the binomial distribution, and then integrate for $a<f_N<b$. But I have this feeling that there should be an easier way. Is there?
Also, I realize that after computing $P(G_N)$, I still have to compute the original conditional probability, which would be complicated. Is there a more clever way to think about the original question?
 A: Computing $P(a < f_N < b)$ is the same as computing $CDF_B(bN) - CDF_B(aN)$, where $CDF_B$ is the cumulative distribution function of the binomial distribution with $N$ trials. So really all you need is an efficient way to compute the CDF of the binomial distribution.
If you're looking for a way to compute this numerically, e.g., because you want to plot $P(a < f_N < b)$ exactly for different values of $a$, $b$, and $N$, there probably exists a library for computing distribution CDF's, including the binomial CDF, in whatever programming language you're using. If you're looking for an analytic approximation, you might try something like this, where $CDF_N$ is the CDF of the normal distribution:
$\begin{align}CDF_B(bN) - CDF_B(aN) &\approx CDF_N(bN) - CDF_N(aN) \\ &\approx PDF_N \left( \frac{a+b}{2}N \right) (b-a)N \\ &= \frac{(b-a) \sqrt{N}}{\sqrt{2 \pi p q}} e^{-\frac{1}{2\sqrt{Npq}} ((\frac{a+b}{2} - p) N)^2 }\end{align}$
E.g., the probability that the observed fraction of successes is between 0.49 and 0.51 after flipping a fair coin 100 times is approximately $0.2 / \sqrt{\pi/2} \approx 0.16$.
The first approximation is the standard approximation of a binomial distribution by a normal distribution:
$Binomial(n,p) \approx Normal(np, \sqrt{npq})$
The second approximation is a midpoint approximation: for any differentiable function $f$,
$f(b) - f(a) \approx f'(\frac{a+b}{2}) (b-a)$
In the last line, we substitute the definition of $PDF_N$ and simplify.
All together, this approximation should be accurate so long as $N$, $pN$, and $qN$ are large (so that $CDF_B \approx CDF_N$), and $(b-a)N$ is small (so the midpoint approximation is accurate).
EDIT: $p$ is the probability of success, and $q = 1-p$ is the probability of failure.
