Instructor: Li-Pang Chen, PhD
Statistics Chapter 6
Problem Set
ch 6 ) p 6/ 36
1. The random variable X, representing the number of cherries in a cherry pu↵, has the following
probability distribution:
x 4 5 6 7
P (X = x) 0.2 0.4 0.3 0.1
(a) Find the mean and the variance of X.
(b) Find the mean and the variance of X for the random sample of 36 cherry pu↵s.
(c) Find the probability that the average number of cherries in 36 cherry pu↵s will be less
than 5.5.
2. Traveling between two campuses of a university in a city via shuttle bus takes, on average,
28 minutes with a standard deviation of 5 minutes. How many times does a bus transport
passengers so that the probability that the average transport time was more than 30 minutes
is approximate 0.0008? Assume the traveling time follows a normal distribution.
3. The average life of a bread-making machine is 7 years, with a standard deviation of 1 year.
Assuming that the lives of these machines follow approximately a normal distribution, find
(a) the probability that the mean life of a random sample of 9 such machines falls between
6.4 and 7.2 years;
(b) the value of x to the right of which 15% of the means computed from random samples
of size 9 would fall.
4. The amount of time that a drive-through bank teller spends on a customer is a random
variable with a mean µ = 3.2 minutes and a standard deviation = 1.6 minutes. If a random
sample of 64 customers is observed, find the probability that their mean time at the teller’s
window is
(a) at most 2.7 minutes;
(b) more than 3.5 minutes;
(c) at least 3.2 minutes but less than 3.4 minutes.
5. Given a normal random variable X with mean 20 and variance 9, and a random sample of
size n taken from the distribution, what sample size n is necessary in order that
P (19.9 X 20.1) = 0.95.
1
6. If 10 fair dice are rolled, approximate the probability that the sum of the values obtained
(which ranges from 10 to 60) is between 30 and 40 inclusive
7. Approximate the probability that the sum of 16 independent uniform (0,1) random variables
exceeds 10. [Hint: Use CLT]
8. The temperature at which a thermostat goes o↵ is normally distributed with variance 2. If
the thermostat is to be tested five times, find
(a) P (S 2 / 2 1.8)
(b) P (0.85 S 2 / 2 1.15)
where S 2 is the sample variance of the five data values.
9. Continue #8, how large a sample would be necessary to ensure that the probability in part
(a) is at least 0.95?
10. Twelve percent of the population is left-handed. Find the probability that there are between
10 and 14 left-handers in a random sample of 100 members of this population. That is, find
P (10 X 14), where X is the number of left-handers in the sample.
11. The lifetime of a certain electrical part is a random variable with population mean 100 hours
and population standard deviation 20 hours. If 16 such parts are tested, find the probability
that the sample mean is
(a) less than 104;
(b) between 98 and 104 hours.
12. Use the text disk to compute P (X 10) when X is a binomial random variable with param-
eters n = 100, p = 0.1. Now compare this with its (a) Poisson and (b) normal approximation.
13. The sample mean and sample standard deviation of all San Francisco student scores on
the most recent Scholastic Aptitude Test examination in mathematics were 517 and 120.
Approximate the probability that a random sample of 144 students would have an average
score exceeding
(a) 507;
(b) 517.