Assignment #1 INDU6310 Applied Probability and Statistics for Engineers

Problem 1. The number of pages in a PDF document you create has a discrete uniform
distribution from 5 to 9 pages (including the end points). What are the mean and standard
deviation of the number of pages in the document?

Solution

Let us denote the number of pages in the document by X.

  E  X    9  5  / 2  7 pages
The mean of the number of pages in the document .
 2

V  X   ( 9  5  1)  1 /12  2 pages 2
, so the standard deviation of the number of pages in the
  V  x   1.414 pages
document .

Problem 2. A food company is conducting research on customers’ taste. In each round of a blind
taste experiment four black teas and one herbal tea are presented to participants. Suppose that the
participants randomly guess, independently in each round.

(a) If a participant picks the herbal tea in each of three rounds, a box of tea is won. What is the
probability that a participant wins a box of tea?

(b) What is the expected number of participants until a second box of tea is won?
Solution

It is assumed that the probability to guess the herbal tea among others does not depend on a
participant and is the same for them all. Therefore, let p  1/ 5  0.2 denote the probability to
win one round of a blind taste experiment.

(a) Let the random variable X denote the number of victories in the rounds of a participant. A
probability that a participant wins a box of tea is then equal to

P  X  3  p 3  0.008
.

(b) Let the random variable Y denote the number of participants until the second box of tea is
won. The probability for a person to win a box of tea equals q  p  0.008 . Then, Y follows a
3

negative binomial distribution

 y  1
P  Y  y     0.008  (1  0.008)
2 y 2

 2 1

r 2
  EY    250
So, q 0.008 .

Problem 3. A technology company is forming a task force of six members to deal with urgent
quality issues. The positions will be filled by randomly chosen qualified applicants. The
qualified applicants consist of five managers and ten engineers.

What is the probability that at least one manager is chosen for the task force?

Solution

Complement event is that no manager is chosen, that is, all engineers are chosen for the task
force.

P(at least one engineer is chosen) = 1 - P(X = 6).

 5  10 
  
0 6
P  X  5   1  P  X  6   1       0.958
15 
 
6 .

Problem 4. The number of contamination particles (that exceed a specified size) in display
panels for televisions follows the Poisson distribution with the mean of 0.0001 per square inch.
A quality engineer is inspecting a television panel that is 55 by 35 inches.

(a) If there are at most two particles, the panel is sent to the assembly shop. What is the
probability that a panel is sent to the assembly shop?
(b) What is the probability that at least 9 of the next 10 panels are sent to the assembly shop?
Assume that panels are independent with respect to contamination.

Solution

Let the random variable X denote the number of contamination particles found on the panel.

(a) The probability that a panel is sent to the assembly shop is

 P  X  2  = P  X  0   P  X  1  P  X  2 
e  T  T  e T (T ) 2
= e  T  
1! 2!
 T   2T 2 
= e 1  T  
 2 
= 0.99897

(b) Let Y denote the number of panels sent to the assembly shop. Y is a binomial random
variable. Probability that at least 9 panels of the next 10 are sent to the assembly shop equals

P  Y  9   P  Y  9   P  Y  10 
.

The probability for one panel to be sent to the assembly shop was determined in the previous part
of the exercise. Therefore,
10
  2T 2 
P  Y  10    P  X  2    e
10 10 T
 1  T    0.98975
 2 

P  Y  9   10  P  X  2    P ( X  2)  10  P  X  2    1  P  X  2    0.010203
9 9

And, the requested value is

P  Y  9   0.999953
.