IE5004, Homework 5

Solution to 4.53.
Assume that a person’s birthday is on any day of a year with probability 1/365.
a. For an arbitrary couple, the probability that both of them were born on April 30 is (1/365)2 .
Let X be the number of couples both of whom were born on April 30. By the Poisson
approximation for a binomial distribution,
2
1 80000−k  80000 k e−80000/365
 
80000  1 k 
P[X = k] = 1 − ≈ × .
k 3652 3652 3652 k!
Then,
2
P[X = 0] ≈ e−80000/365 = e−0.600 .
Therefore, the probability that at least one couple were both born on April 30 is
P[X ≥ 1] ≈ 1 − e−0.600 .

b. For an arbitrary couple, the probability that they have the same birthday is
1 1
365 × 2
= .
365 365
Following the same procedure, we have
P[X ≥ 1] ≈ 1 − e−80000/365 = 1 − e−219.2 .

Solution to 4.57.
Let X be the number of accidents on a specific day.
(a)
2
X 3k
P[X ≥ 3] = 1 − P[X < 3] = 1 − e−3 = 0.577.
k!
k=0

(b) Because P[X ≥ 1] = 1 − P[X = 0] = 1 − e−3 = 0.950, then

P[X ≥ 3, X ≥ 1] P[X ≥ 3]
P[X ≥ 3|X ≥ 1] = = = 0.607.
P[X ≥ 1] P[X ≥ 1]

Solution to 4.78.
The probability that we choose 2 white and 2 black balls by one selection is
  
4 4
2 2 18
p=   = .
8 35
4
Let X be the number of selections until we choose exactly 2 white and 2 black balls. Then, X
follows a geometric distribution, whose distribution is given by
17n−1 × 18
P[X = n] = (1 − p)n−1 p = .
35n