Special Probability Distributions Problems
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Qinxin XieSpecial Probability Distributions Problems
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Qinxin XieCommon questions
Powered by AIThe expected position of the sailor after N steps is E[X] = 0. This is because each step is independent and equally likely to be either to the left or the right with a probability of 0.5. Thus, the expected contribution to the position from left and right steps cancels out, leading to an overall expected position of zero .
The variance of the sailor's position after N steps is V(X) = N. Since each step is independent with equal probabilities, the variance is calculated based on the sum of independent Bernoulli trials. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance, which is √N. This is not the same as the average distance from the pub, as the distance disregards direction (absolute value), while standard deviation considers the spread from the mean, which is zero .
If the market share s decreases by 30%, the new market share is s* = 0.7s. The expected value of s* is calculated as 0.7 times the expected value of s, denoted as E[s*] = 0.7E[s]. This results from linearity of expectation, where E[aX] = aE[X] for any constant a .
Conditionally, if by 10:15 the bus hasn't arrived, the remaining interval is from 0 to 15 minutes. Thus, the probability to wait more than another 10 minutes is the proportion of time between 10 minutes and 15 minutes to the remaining interval: P(wait > 10 additional | 15 passed) = 5/15 = 1/3 .
For a man guessing a fair coin, the probability of predicting correctly is 0.5 per toss. Using a binomial distribution with n=10, p=0.5, P(X≥7) is calculated as the sum of probabilities P(X=7) + P(X=8) + P(X=9) + P(X=10). These are calculated using the binomial formula: P(X=k) = C(10,k)*0.5^k*0.5^(10-k). Adding these probabilities gives approximately 0.1719 .
For a Poisson random variable with parameter λ, the probability mass function is P(X=k) = (e^-λ * λ^k) / k! . To maximize P(X=k) for a given k > 0, we set the derivative with respect to λ to zero and solve, yielding λ = k as the value that maximizes P{X=k} .
To generalize, for waiting time not exceeding x minutes, during a total period of T, where 0 ≤ x ≤ T, the probability P(wait ≤ x) = x/T. Furthermore, for an already waited time of w, the conditional probability that you'll wait no more than y additional minutes, P(wait ≤ w+y | wait > w) = y/(T-w), assuming w+y ≤ T .
To find the standard deviation of s with a PDF f(s) = ks(1-s)^2, first calculate E[s^2] by integrating s^2f(s) over [0,1]. Then compute the variance V(s) as E[s^2] - (E[s])^2. The standard deviation is the square root of V(s). Calculations require solving integrals and involve finding k from the normalization condition ∫f(s)ds = 1 .
If a student guesses on each question with a 1/3 probability of being correct, the probability of getting exactly 4 or 5 correct answers can be calculated using the binomial distribution formula. P(X=4) = C(5,4)*(1/3)^4*(2/3) = 5/243 and P(X=5) = (1/3)^5 = 1/243. Thus, P(X ≥ 4) = 5/243 + 1/243 = 6/243 or approximately 0.0247 .
The probability that you wait more than 10 minutes is given by the proportion of the time interval between 10 minutes to 30 minutes out of the entire 30-minute window. Since the arrival time is uniformly distributed from 0 to 30 minutes, P(X > 10) = (20/30) = 2/3 .