MTH510A: AP Statistics | Unit 5 | 5.

1 Practice 2

Study Sheet
What Is Probability?

When you know the frequency of occurrences and the size of the sample or population, estimating the
probability of an event is easy. You find the probability of an event by dividing the number of
successes by the total number of outcomes. Say an event occurs in 3 out of 10 possible outcomes,
then the probability is .30. We also say there's a 30% chance of the event occurring.

In this activity you'll also work with expected values. Let's say that 62% of a population has blue
eyes. You'd expect that if you took a sample with a size of 1000 from that population, 620 members
of your sample would have blue eyes (1000 • .62 = 620). An expected value takes into account the
number of trials or total sample size in calculating the expected number of successes. But remember,
the expected value of a sample size may not coincide with actual observed number of individuals
with blue eyes in that sample. This is where the law of large numbers comes in. The law of large
numbers says that as the number of trials or sample size increases, the expected value approaches
to the observed value.

1. You run into your friend, Sausha, at the PNW Airlines terminal at the Seattle airport. She tells you that she's taking a 9:00 AM flight, but fails to tell you the destination. You look at departure screen and see the following information:

Departure Departure Time

Destination
Kelowna, BC 8:45
Portland, OR 9:00
Walla Walla, WA 9:00
Pasco, WA 9:00
Boise, ID 9:00
Missoula, MT 9:00
Spokane, WA 9:00
Calgary, AB 9:00
Wenatchee, WA 9:00
Vancouver, BC 9:00
Medford, OR 9:00
Redmond, OR 9:10
Whitefish, MT 9:15
Yakima, WA 9:15

A. What is the probability that Sausha is travelling to a destination outside the state of
Washington?

B. Let's assume that each of the 9:00 AM flights carries the same number of passengers.
You randomly select 200 individuals presently standing in the PNW main terminal line
waiting to travel on a 9:00 AM flight. What is the expected number of individuals in this
sample who are travelling to a destination in the state of Oregon?

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 MTH510A: AP Statistics | Unit 5 | 5.1 Practice 2

2. You have a standard deck of cards.

A. What is the probability of randomly drawing a face card (Jack, Queen, King, or Ace) from
this deck?

B. Starting with the original deck, what's the probability of randomly selecting a black King?

C. Now remove all the face cards from the deck. At this point, what's the probability of
randomly selecting a diamond from the deck?

D. You leave these 36 cards lying on a table in your house. You go back to your cards and
realize that your dog ate some of the cards. For some strange reason he really likes the
cards in the clubs suit. You throw away the chewed cards and randomly select a diamond
from what's left of the deck. Would you expect the likelihood of selecting a diamond to
increase, decrease, or remain the same as the previous draw?

3. In a sample of 5,000 patients we find that:

220 have kidney disease 780

have cancer
1,093 have heart disease
1,290 have arthritis

A. What is the probability of selecting an individual with kidney disease?

B. What is the probability of selecting an individual with cancer?

C. What is the probability of selecting an individual with heart disease?

D. What is the probability of selecting an individual with arthritis?

E. Dr. Jones has his own random sample of 75 patients. What's the expected number of
patients with each of these four medical conditions?

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 MTH510A: AP Statistics | Unit 5 | 5.1 Practice 2

4. The age breakdown of the players on the Valley High School soccer team is:

Grade Number of Number of

Players Starters
Senior 14 7
Junior 5 3
Sophomore 4 0
Freshmen 2 1

A. What's the probability that a soccer player is an underclassman (not a senior) on

this team?

B. What's the probability of selecting a senior from among the starters?

C. What's probability of freshmen who are starters on the team?

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