Week 2 Recommended Problems

Statistics 134,

Pitman, Spring 2015

2.1.2 Suppose that in 4-child families, each child is equally likely to be a boy or a girl,
independently of the others. Which would then be more common, 4-child families with
2 boys and 2 girls, or 4-child families with different numbers of boys and girls? What
would be the relative frequencies?
2.1.7 You roll a die, and I roll a die. You win if the number showing on your die is strictly
greater than the one on mine. If we play this game five times, what is the chance that
you win at least four times?
2.1.11 70% of the people in a certain population are adults. A random sample of size 15
will be drawn, with replacement, from this population.
1. What is the most likely number of adults in the sample?
2. What is the chance of getting exactly this many adults?
2.r.8 Suppose you and I each roll ten dice. What is the probability that we each roll the
same number of sixes?
2.2.2 Recalculate the approximations above for a biased coin with P (heads) = 0.51.
2.2.3 A fair coin is tossed repeatedly. Consider the following two possible outcomes: 55 or
more heads in the first 100 tosses; and 220 or more heads in the first 400 tosses
1. Without calculation, say which of these outcomes is more likely. Why?
2. Confirm your answer to a) by a calculation.
2.2.4 Suppose that each of 300 patients has a probability of 1/3 of being helped by a
treatment independent of its effect on the other patients. Find approximately the
probability that more than 120 patients are helped by the treatment.
2.2.8 Find, approximately, the chance of getting 100 sixes in 600 rolls of a die.
2.2.12 A fair coin is tossed 10, 000 times. Find a number m such that the chance of the
number of heads being between 5000 m and 5000 + m is approximately 2/3.