PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS (STAT 353)

DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND ACTUARIAL SCIENCE

KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

TUTORIAL

NOTE!!
These tutorial questions comprise two sections: MAIN QUESTIONS and
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS.

We will solve the MAIN QUESTIONS together in class, and the SUPPLEMENTARY
QUESTIONS will be available for the student to try.
 MAIN QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1
a. A small town has 80 registered voters, 45 of whom favour a school bond issue. The town
treasurer is going to take a poll of 10 registered voters.
i) How many different selections of 10 people can be made from the 80
registered voters?
ii) What is the probability that the sample selected will include nine or more
favouring the bond issue?

b. The probability that a drug cures a particular ailment is 0.45. If 12 people are reported
sick of that ailment and given the drug, find the probability that:
i) All the 12 patients are cured
ii) At least eight patients are cured
iii) Less than three patients are cured

c. Suppose a fair coin is tossed three times. Find the probability distribution for the number
of heads. Hence find the mean and variance of the distribution.

d. Changes in airport procedures require considerable planning. The arrival rate of aircraft is
an important factor that must be considered. Assume that the number of small aircraft
arriving at a particular airport in an hour has the Poisson distribution with a mean of six.
i) Find the probability that three small aircraft arrive in one hour
ii) Find the probability that three small aircraft arrive in thirty minutes
iii) What is the mean number of arrival during a two hour period?

e. Suppose that a random variable X has a Poisson distribution with a mean 𝜇 = 5. Find
i. 𝑃(𝑥 < 4)
ii. 𝑃(𝑥 ≥ 4)
iii. 𝑃(𝑥 = 0)
f. A random variable has a Poisson distribution with a mean 𝜇. If 𝑃(𝑋 = 2) = 0.6 𝑃(𝑋 =
1), Calculate
i) The value of 𝜇
ii) 𝑃(𝑋 ≥ 1)
QUESTION 2

a. A bus arrives every 10 minutes at a bus stop. It is assumed that the waiting time for
a particular individual is a random variable with a continuous uniform distribution.
i) Find the probability that an individual waits more than 7 minutes
ii) Find the probability that an individual waits between 2 and 7 minutes

b. Suppose X has a continuous uniform distribution over the interval (-1, 1).
i) Find the mean and the variance of X
ii) Determine the value of a such that 𝑃(−𝑎 < 𝑋 < 𝑎) = 0.90

c. The time between arrivals of electronic messages at your computer is exponentially

distributed with a mean of 2 hours
i) What is the probability that you will not receive a message in a two-hour
period?
ii) If you have not had a message in the last 4 hours, what is the probability
that you will receive a message in the next 2 hours?
iii) What is the expected time between your fifth and sixth messages?

d. Suppose that the operation lifetime of a certain type of battery is an exponential

random variable with a mean 𝜃 (measured in years). Find the probability that:
i) A battery of this type will have an operating lifetime of over four years
ii) At least one of the five batteries of this type will have an operating lifetime
of over four years.

e. If Z is N(0, 1), find

i) P(0.53 < Z ≤ 2.06).
ii) P(−0.79 ≤ Z < 1.52).
iii) P(Z > −1.77).
iv) P(|Z| < 1.96).
v) If the distribution of Z is N(0, 1), then find constants a and b such that
P(Z ≤ a) = 0.9131 and P(Z ≥ b) = 0.0526.

f. The “fill” problem is important in many industries, such as those making cereal,
toothpaste, beer, and so on. If an industry claims that it is selling 12 ounces of its
product in a container, it must have a mean greater than 12 ounces, or else the
FDA will crackdown, although the FDA will allow a very small percentage of the
containers to have less than 12 ounces. (a) If the content X of a container has a
𝑁(12.1, 𝜎 ) distribution, find
i) σ so that P(X < 12) = 0.01.
ii) If σ = 0.05, find μ so that P(X < 12) = 0.01.
 SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS!!!!!
QUESTION 3

a. A fair four-sided die has two faces numbered 0 and two faces numbered 2. Another
fair four-sided die has its faces numbered 0, 1, 4, and 5. The two dice are rolled. Let
X and Y be the respective outcomes of the roll. Let W = X + Y.
i) Determine the pmf of W.
ii) Draw a probability histogram of the pmf of W.

b. Bean seeds from supplier A have an 85% germination rate, and those from supplier B
have a 75% germination rate. A seed-packaging company purchases 40% of its bean
seeds from supplier A and 60% from supplier B and mixes these seeds together.
i) Find the probability P(G) that a seed selected at random from the mixed
seeds will germinate.
ii) Given that a seed germinates find the probability that the seed was
purchased from supplier A.

QUESTION 4
a. An insurance company sells an automobile policy with a deductible of one unit. Let X
be the amount of the loss having pmf

Where c is a constant, determine c and the expected value of the amount the insurance
company must pay.
b. Let the random variable X have the pmf

Compute
i) E(X),
ii) E(X ) , and
iii) E(3X − 2X + 4)
QUESTION 5
a. If X is normally distributed with a mean of 6 and a variance of 25, find
i) P(6 ≤ X ≤ 12).
ii) P(0 ≤ X ≤ 8).
iii) P(|X − 6| < 5).
iv) Let X have an exponential distribution with a mean of θ = 20. Then the
pdf of X is f(x) = e , 0 ≤ x < ∞ .Find P(X > 18)
QUESTION 6

a. State the types of variables, explain them and give three examples each.
b. Let the pmf of X be defined by 𝑓((x) = , x = 2, 3, 4.
i. Draw a line graph for this pmf.
ii. Draw a probability histogram for this pmf
c. Verify that the following probability function is a probability mass function (pmf).
 1
 ( 2 x  3 ), x  1 , 2 , 3
p ( x )   21
 0 , elsewhere

QUESTION 7
a. Find the value of k given that the function is a probability mass function.
 k ( x  1), x  3, 4, 5
p( x)  
 0 , elsewhere

b. Let the random variable X be the number of days a certain patient needs to be in the
hospital. Suppose X has the pmf
5 − x
f(x) = , x = 1, 2, 3, 4.
10
If the patient is to receive $200 from an insurance company for each of the first two
days in the hospital and $100 for each day after the first two days, what is the
expected payment for the hospitalization?

c. Given E(X + 4) = 10 and E( (X + 4) ) = 116, determine

i) Var(X + 4)
ii) μ = E(X),
iii) σ = Var(X).

QUESTION 8
a. Customers arrive at a travel agency at a mean rate of 11 per hour. Assuming that the
number of arrivals per hour has a Poisson distribution, give the probability that more
than ten customers arrive in a given hour.

b. A certain type of mint has a label weight of 20.4 grams. Suppose that the probability
is 0.90 that a mint weighs more than 20.7 grams. Let X equal the number of mints that
weigh more than 20.7 grams in a sample of eight mints selected at random.
 i) How is X distributed if we assume independence?
ii) Find P(X ≥ 6).
c. One of four different prizes was randomly put into each box of cereal. If a family
decided to buy this cereal until it obtained at least one of each of the four different
prizes, what is the expected number of boxes of cereal that must be purchased?