MATH 3160, SPRING 2013

HOMEWORK #7—SOLUTIONS

JOHANNA FRANKLIN

This assignment will be due on Wednesday, April 3 at the beginning of class. Remember to
show your reasoning and name the classmates you worked with. Answers without work shown will
receive almost minimal credit.

(1) The coinmaster at the mint of Fraudlandia packages the coins in bags of 500 and places
exactly one counterfeit coin in each bag. His boss is suspicious and decides to take samples
from each of the bags.
(a) What is the probability that he will find at least one counterfeit coin if he tests one
coin chosen at random from each of 500 bags?
Solution. This should be modeled by a binomial random variable X: the boss conducts
a sequence of trials, each with the same probability of success. Since there is one
1
counterfeit coin in each bag of 500, the probability of success for each trial is 500 .
Therefore, the probability that he will find at least one counterfeit coin in 500 trials is
1 0 499 500
    
500
P (X ≥ 1) = 1 − P (X = 0) = 1 − ≈ .6325.
0 500 500
(b) What is the probability that he will find at least one counterfeit coin if he tests two
coins chosen at random from each of 250 bags?
Solution. This should be modeled by a binomial random variable X: the boss conducts
a sequence of trials, each with the same probability of success. Since now the boss is
testing two coins from each bag of 500, we need to use a hypergeometric random
variable Y to find the probability of success for each trial. The probability of finding
at least one counterfeit coin in a given bag is
1 499



1 1
P (Y ≥ 0) = P (Y = 1) + P (Y = 2) = 500

+ 0 = .004.
2
(I’ll write this probability as p because I don’t like plugging in approximations.) There-
fore, the probability that he will find at least one counterfeit coin in 250 trials is
 
250 0
P (X ≥ 1) = 1 − P (X = 0) = 1 − p (1 − p)250 ≈ .6329.
0
We can see that it’s slightly more useful to test twice as many coins each time!

1
2 FRANKLIN

(2) (based on Chapter 5, #1) Let X be a random variable with probability density function
(
c(1 − x2 ) −1 < x < 1
f (x) =
0 otherwise
(a) What is the value of c?
R∞
Solution. We know that −∞ f (x) dx must equal 1, so we compute the integral and
find that
Z ∞ Z 1 1
x3

2 4
f (x) dx = c(1 − x ) dx = c x − = c.
−∞ −1 3 −1 3
Therefore, 1 = 43 c and c = 34 .
(b) What is the cumulative distribution function of X? Give the function, not just a
sketch.
Solution. To get the cumulative distribution function of X, we integrate the proba-
bility density function from −∞ to an arbitrary point a in the region where f (x) > 0:
Z a Z a a
x3 a3 1

3 3 3 3
(1 − x2 ) dx = (1 − x2 ) dx = x− = a− + .
−∞ 4 −1 4 4 3 −1 4 4 2
Therefore, 
0
 a ≤ −1
3 a3 1
F (a) = a − + −1 < a < 1
4 4 2
1 a≥1


(c) What is P (−2 < X < 0)?

Solution.
0 0 0
x3
Z Z 
3 2 3 1
P (−2 < X < 0) = f (x) dx = (1 − x ) dx = x− =
−2 −1 4 4 3 −1 2
(d) What is E[X]?
Solution.
∞ 1 1
3 x2 x4
Z Z 
3 3
E[X] = xf (x) dx = (x − x ) dx = − =0
−∞ −1 4 4 2 4 −1
(e) What is V ar(X)?
Solution. Since V ar(X) = E[X 2 ] − E[X]2 , we first compute E[X 2 ]:
Z ∞ Z 1 1
3 x3 x5

2 2 3 2 4 1
E[X ] = x f (x) dx = (x − x ) dx = − = .
−∞ −1 4 4 3 5 −1 5
1
Now we see, using (d), that V ar(X) = 5 − 02 = 15 .

Suggested problems: Chapter 5 Problems: 2-8 (#7 is especially good), 11; Chapter
5 Theoretical Exercises: 1