Department of Mathematics MAL 140 (Probability and Statistics) Tutorial Sheet No.

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1. Items coming o a production line are marked defective (D) or non-defective (N). Items are observed and their condition noted. This is continued until two consecutive defectives are produced or four items have been checked, which ever occurs rst. Describe the sample space for this experiment. 2. A particle starts at the origin and moves to and from on a straight line. At any move it jumps either 1 unit to the right or 1 unit to the left each with probability 1 . All successive moves are independent. Given that 2 the particle is at the origin at the completion of the 6th move, nd the probability that it never occupied a position to the left of the origin during previous moves. 3. A biased coin with probability p, 0 < p < 1, of success (head) is tossed until for the rst time the same result occurs three times in succession (that is, three heads or three tails in succession). Find the probability that the game will end at the seventh throw. 4. Show that the probability that exactly one of the events A or B occurs is equal to P (A) + P (B) 2P (A B). 5. In a town of (n + 1) inhabitants, a person tells a rumor to a second person, who in turn, repeats it to a third person etc. At each step, the recipient of the rumor is chosen at random from the n people available. Find the probability that the rumor will be told r times without returning to the originator. 6. The coecients a, b and c of the quadratic equation ax2 +bx+c = 0 are determined by rolling a fair die three times in a row. What is the probability that both roots of the equation are real?. What is the probability that both roots of the equation are complex? 7. Suppose that n independent trials, each of which results in any of the outcomes 0, 1 and 2, with respective probabilities 0.3, 0.5 and 0.2, are performed. Find the probability that both outcome 1 and outcome 2 occur at least once. 8. An urn contains balls numbered from 1 to N . A ball is randomly drawn. a) What is the probability that the number on the ball is divisible by 3 or 4? b) What happens to the probability from the previous question when n ? 9. Prove Booles inequality, namely that P (n Ai ) i=1
n i=1

P (Ai ).

10. In an electronics repair shop there are 10 TVs to be repaired 3 of which are from brand A, 3 from brand B and 4 from brand C. The order in which the TVs are repaired is random. (a) Find the probability that a TV from the brand A will be the rst one to be repaired? (b) Find the probability that all three TVs from the brand B will be rst repaired? (c) Find the probability that the TVs will be repaired in the order CBACBACABC? 11. Pick a number x at random out of the integers 1 through 30. Let A be the event that x is even, B that x is divisible by 3 and C that x is divisible by 5. Are the events A, B and C independent? 12. Prove that events A1 , A2 , , An are independent, if and only if, P (B1 B2 Bn ) = P (B1 )P (B2 ) P (Bn ) for all possible choices of B1 , B2 , , Bn with Bi = Ai or Bi = Ac for all i = 1, 2, . . . , n. i

13. Suppose there are n distinguishable particles, each of which is equally likely to be in any of N cells (N n). Find the probability that (a) there will be one particle in each of rst n cells (b) there will be one particle in each of n arbitrary cells. 14. Solve the above problem (13) if n particles are indistinguishable. 15. Let us pick one of the four points (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1) and (1, 1, 1) at random with probability 1/4 each. Dene, for k = 1, 2, 3 Ak = {the kth coordinate equals 1} Show that the events A1 , A2 and A3 are pairwise independent, but not independent.
1 16. Let = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, = () and P a probability measure with P ({1}) = P ({2}) = 12 , P ({3}) = 1 P ({4}) = 4 . Find P ({5}) and P ({6}) if the events {1, 3, 4} and {1, 2, 3, 5} are independent. r 17. Let A1 , A2 , . . . , AN be a system of mutually independent events (i.e., P (r AIj ) = j=1 P (AIj ), j=1 1 r = 2, 3, . . . , N ). Assume that P (An ) = n+1 , n = 1, 2, . . . , N .

(a) Find the probability that exactly one of the AI s occur? (b) Find the probability that at most two AI s occur? 18. A point X is chosen at random on a line segment AB. (a) Find the probability that the ratio of lengths AX/BX is smaller than a (a > 0) (b) Find the probability that the ratio of the length of the shorter segment to that of the larger segment is less than 1/3. 19. Suppose a long-haul airplane has four engines and needs three or more engines to work in order to y. Another airplane has two engines and needs one engine to y. Assume that, the engines are independent and suppose each has a constant probability p of staying functional during a ight. Find the reliability of the both ights and conclude which one is safer. 20. The probability that both of a pair of twins are boys equals 0.32 and the probability that both of them are girls equals 0.32. Find the conditional probability that (a) both twins are boys, given one of them is a boy. (b) the both of twins are girls, given one is a girl. 21. Two percent of woman of age 45 who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. Ninety percent of those with breast cancer have positive mammographies. Ten percent of the woman who do not have breast cancer will also have positive mammographies. Given a woman has a positive mammography, what is the probability she has breast cancer? 22. Let A1 , A2 , . . . be arbitrary events in a probability space such that P (An ) =
1 2n ,

n = 1, 2, . . .

(a) Show that P (n Ai ) 1 21 n i=1 (b) Obtain a lower bound for P (n Ac ) i=1 i (c) Assuming that the events Ai , i = 1, 2, 3, 4 are independent, what is the probability that none of the rst 4 events occur? 23. An omnibus company always requires its drivers to wait for 10 minutes at a particular bus stop. The bus you hope to get arrives at this stop anywhere between noon and 1 PM. Assume that you arrive at the stop randomly between 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM and plan to spend at most 10 minutes waiting for the bus. What is the probability that you catch your bus on any day? 24. The base and altitude of a right triangle are obtained by picking points randomly from [0, a] and [0, b], respectively. Find the probability that the area of the triangle so formed will be less than ab/4.