Sample midterm test (with solutions)

1. Probability and Bayes formula

Steve takes either a bus or the subway to go to work with probabilities 0.25 and 0.75, respectively. When he takes the bus, he is late 40% of the days. When he takes the subway, he is late 30% of the days. If Steve is late for work on a particular day, what is the probability that he took the bus? (2 marks)

2. Binomial distribution

A psychiatrist believes that 90% of all people who visit doctors have problems of a psychosomatic nature. She decides to select 20 patients at random to test her theory. a. Assuming that the psychiatrists theory is true, what is the expected value of x, the number of the 20 patients who have psychosomatic problems? b. What is the variance of x, assuming that the theory is true? c. Find P( x 14) , assuming that the theory is true. (1+1+1=3 marks)
3. Poisson distribution

Is known that between 8 and 10 a.m. on Saturdays, cars arrive at a toll station in Indiana at a rate of 60 per hour. Assume that a Poisson process occurring, and that the random variable x represents the number of cars arriving at the station between 9:00 and 9:05 a.m. a) What is the standard deviation of the number of cars arriving at the toll station between 9:00 and 9:05 a.m.? b) Find P(x = 0).

(1+1 = 2 marks)

4. Normal distribution

Suppose the numbers of a particular type of bacteria in samples of 1 milliliter (ml) of drinking water tend to be approximately normally distributed, with a mean of 80 and a standard deviation of 10. What is the probability that a given 1-ml sample will contain more than 100 bacteria? (1 mark)
5. Bivariate distributions Suppose that the joint p.m.f. of X and Y is given in the accompanying table.

p(x,y) x y 0 5 0 .03 .04 5 .21 .15 10 .16 .20 15 .11 .10

a) What is marginal p.m.f. for X b) What is marginal p.m.f for Y

(1+1 = 2 marks)