Unit I

Elementary Probability & Laws of Probability

3. What is the probability of choosing at random one of the following cards from a normal pack of
52 playing cards? i) A 4 or 5 but not a spade (Ans: 6/52)
4. When A and B are 2 mutually exclusive events such that P(A) = 1/2 & P(B) = 1/3, nd P(A∪B) and
P(A∩B). (Ans: 5/6 & 0)

5. A card is drawn from a well-shu ed pack of playing cards. What is the probability that it is ei-
ther a spade or an ace? (Ans: 4/13)

6. A fair coin is tossed 4 times. Dene the sample space corresponding to this random experiment.
Also give the subsets corresponding to the following events and nd the respective probabilities
(a) More heads than tails are obtained. (b) Tails occur on the even numbered tosses (Ans: 5/16 & 1/4)

7. A bag contains 2 white and 4 black balls. Two balls are drawn one by one without replacement.
Write the sample space corresponding to this experiment and the subsets corresponding to the following
events. (a) The rst ball drawn is white. (b) Both the balls drawn are black. Also nd the probabilities
of the above events. (Ans: 1/3 & 2/5)
8. A box contains 3 white balls and 2 black balls. We remove at random 2 balls in succession. What is
the probability that the rst removed ball is white and the second is red?
(Ans: 6/25 (With replacement), 3/10 (Without replacement))
9. A bag contains 10 tickets numbered 1, 2, ..., 10. Three tickets are drawn at random and arranged in
ascending order of magnitude. What is the probability that the middle number is 5? (Ans: 1/6)
10. In a shooting test, the probability of hitting the target is 1/2 for A, 2/3 for B and 3/4 for C. If
all of them re at the target, nd the probability that (a) none of them hits the target, and (b) at least
one of them hits the target (Ans: 1/24 & 23/24)
11. If the probability that A solves a problem is 1/2 and that for B is 3/4 and if they aim at solv-
ing a problem independently, what is the probability that the problem is solved? (Ans: 7/8)
12. A lot consists of 10 good articles, 4 with minor defects and 2 with major defects. Two articles
are chosen from the lot at random (without replacement). Find the probability that (a) both are good, (b)
both have major defects, (c) at least 1 is good, (d) at most 1 is good, (e) exactly 1 is good, (f) neither has
major defects, and (g) neither is good.(Ans: a) 3/8, b)1/200, c)7/8, d)5/8, e)1/2, f)91/120, g)1/8)

13. From 6 positive and 8 negative numbers, 4 numbers are chosen at random (without replacement)
and multiplied. What is the probability that the product is positive? (Ans: 505/1001)

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14. What is the probability that there will be 53 sundays in (i) a leap year, and (ii) a non-leap year?
(Ans: 2/7, 1/7)
15. A card is drawn at random from a pack of 52 playing cards. Find the probability that the card
drawn is (i) a king (ii) neither a king nor a jack. (Ans: 1/13 & 11/13)
16. What is the probability of drawing the following cards from a deck of cards? (i) a spade (ii) a
black card (iii) a number card (Ans: 1/4, 1/2, 9/13)
17. What is the probability of drawing the following cards from a deck of cards? (i) A king or a red
card (ii) A black and ace card (Ans: 7/13 & 1/26)
18. Two cards are drawn at random in succession with replacement from a deck of 52 well shued
card. What is the probability of getting both 'Kings'? (Ans: 1/169)
19. Two marbles are chosen from a bag of 3 red, 5 white, and 8 green marbles, without replacement!
What's the probability that one is white and one is green? (Ans: 1/3)
20. If two letters are taken at random from the word HOME, what is the probability that none of
the letters would be vowels? (Ans: 1/6)
21. A committee of 3 members is to be made out of 6 men and 5 women. What is the probability
that the committee has at least two women? (Ans: 14/33)
Conditional Probability & Bayes' Theorem
22. A box contains 4 bad and 6 good tubes. Two are drawn out from the box at a time. One of them is
tested and found to be good. What is the probability that the other one is also good? (Ans: 5/9)
23. Suppose a family has two children and suppose one of the children is a boy. What is the proba-
bility that both children are boys? (Ans: 1/3)
24. The probability that it is Friday and that a student is absent is 0.03. There are 6 school days
in a week. What is the probability that a student is absent given that today is Friday? (Ans: 0.18)
25. Two fair dice are rolled. What is the (conditional) probability that the sum of the two faces is 6
given that the two dice are showing dierent faces? (Ans: 2/15)
26. A card is drawn from a deck of 52 playing cards. i) What is the probability it is a 7 given that
that is a red card? ii) What is the probability it is a 7 given that is a heart? (Ans: 1/13 & 2/13)
27. Bag I contains 2 red and 1 black balls and bag II contains 3 red and 2 black balls. What is the
probability that a ball drawn from one of the bags is red? (Ans: 19/30)
28. In a coin tossing experiment, if the coin shows head, 1 dice is thrown and the result is recorded.
But if the coin shows tail, 2 dice are thrown and their sum is recorded. What is the probability that the
recorded number will be 2? (Ans: 7/72)
29. Bag I contains 2 white and 3 black balls and bag II contains 4 white and 1 black balls. A ball chosen
at random from one of the bags is white. What is the probability that it has come from bag I? (Ans: 1/3)

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30. A bolt is manufactured by 3 machines A, B and C. A turns out twice as many items as B, and
machines B and C produce equal number of items. 2% of bolts produced by A and B are defective and
4% of bolts produced by C are defective. All bolts are put into 1 stock pile and 1 is chosen from this pile.
What is the probability that it is defective? (Ans: 1/40)
31. The chance that a doctor A will diagnose a disease x correctly is 60%.The chance that a patient
will die by his treatment after correct diagnosis is 40% and the chance of death by wrong diagnosis is
70%. A patient of doctor A, who had disease x, died. What is the chance that his disease was diagnosed
correctly? (Ans: 6/13)
32. There are 4 candidates for the oce of the highway commissioner; the respective probabilities that
they will be selected are 0.3, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.1, and the probabilities for a project's approval are 0.35, 0.85,
0.45 and 0.15, depending on which of the 4 candidates is selected. What is the probability of the project
getting approved? (Ans: 0.47)
33. There are 3 true coins and 1 false coin with `head' on both sides. A coin is chosen at random
and tossed 4 times. If `head' occurs all the 4 times, what is the probability that the false coin has been
chosen and used? (Ans: 16/19)
34. For a certain binary, communication channel, the probability that a transmitted `0' is received as
a `0' is 0.95 and the probability that a transmitted `1' is received as `1' is 0.90. If the probability that a
`0' is transmitted is 0.4,  nd the probability that (i) a `1' is received and (ii) a `1' was transmitted given
that a `1' was received. (Ans: 0.56 & 27/28)
35. The probability that a student passes a certain exam is 0.9, given that he studied. The proba-
bility that he passes the exam without studying is 0.2. Assume that the probability that the student
studies for an exam is 0.75. Given that the student passed the exam, what is the probability that he
studied? (Ans: 27/29)