Question 1

The HAL Corporation wishes to improve the resistance of

its personal computer to disk-drive and key-board
failures. At present, the design of the computer is such
that the disk-drive failures occur only one-third as often
as key-board failures The probability of simultaneous
disk-drive and key-board failures is 0.05
(i) If the computer is 80 percent resistant to disk-drive
and/or key-board failure, how low must the disk-
drive failure probability be?
(ii) If the key-board is improved so that it fails only
twice as often as the disk-drive (and the
simultaneous failure probability is still 0.05), will
the disk-drive failure probability from part (i) yield
a resistance to disk-drive and/or key-board failure
higher or lower than 90 percent?

PROBABILITIES UNDER STATISTICAL INDEPENDENCE

Type of probability Symbol Formula

Marginal P(A) P(A)

Joint P(AB) or P(A and B) P(A) x P(B)

Conditional P(B | A) P(B)

Question 2

The four floodgates of a small hydroelectric dam fail and are

repaired independently of each other. From experience, it is known
that each flood gate is out of order 4 (four) percent of time.
(i) If the floodgate 1 is out of order, what is the probability
that floodgates 2 and 3 are out of order?
(ii) During a tour of the dam, you are told that the chances of
all four floodgates being out of order are less than 1 in
5,000,000. Is this statement true?

PROBABILITIES UNDER STATISTICAL INDEPENDENCE

AND DEPENDENCE
Type of Symbol Formula Formula
probability (Statistical (Statistical
independence) dependence)
P(A) Sum of the
Marginal P(A) probabilities of
the joint events
in which A
occurs
P(A) x P(B) P(B | A) x p(A)
Joint P(AB) or P(A or
and B) P(A | B) x p(B)
P( AB)
P( A )
Conditional P(B | A) P(B)
Question 3

During a study of auto accidents, the Highway safety council found

that 60 percent of all accidents occur at night, 52 percent are alcohol
related, and 37 percent occur at night and are alcohol related.
(i) What is the probability that an accident was alcohol
related, given that it occurred at night?
(ii) What is the probability that an accident occurred at night,
given that it was alcohol related?

Question 4

A physical therapist at ESU knows that the football team will play
40 percent of its games on artificial turf this season. He also knows
that a football players’ chances of incurring a knee injury are 50
percent higher if he is playing on artificial turf instead of grass. If a
players’ probability of knee injury on artificial turf is 0.42, what is
the probability that.
(i) A randomly selected football player incurs a knee injury?
(ii) A randomly selected football player with knee injury
incurred the injury playing on grass?