Ch.

4 HW Notes
Dr. Shoemaker

STAT 5301 - UHD

This is a document designed to help with Ch 4 homework on WebAssign. This R code is

yours to modify and run.

1. Suppose the Reaction Temperature

Review the definition of a Uniform RV’s pdf if you need to.
The function you’ll need is punif(x,a,b) which calculates P( X < x) for X ∼ Unif (a , b).
punif(0,-1,1) # P(X < 0) for X ~ Unif(-1,1)

## [1] 0.5

2. An article considered the use of…

For the first part, remember our law that the probability needs to integrate to/total 1. Use
this to find that number.
For calculating the probabilities, you may need to use multiple punif() commands to get
your answer. Think: if a punif() result contains an area under the curve you don’t want,
subtract off another punif() result that is that area!
You have two options for P( X > x) questions.
1. Since P( X > x)=1 − P( X < x), we can calculate with our usual pdf commands.
2. We can tell R that we want to look at the “upper tail” of the probability distribution, by
setting one of the function arguments, lower.tail = FALSE. By default, this is TRUE, so
the function computes P( X < x). If we set it to FALSE, the function will compute
P( X > x)!
1 - punif(.2, 0, 1) # method 1

## [1] 0.8

punif(.2, 0, 1, lower.tail = FALSE) # method 2

## [1] 0.8

3. Let X = the time between…

(a) and (b) - You’ll need to look up the formula for the expectation and standard deviation
for the exponential distribution.

(b) and (d) - You’re welcome to calculate these using the book formula and tables, but you
can also use pexp()
4. Let X denote the distance …
(a) and (b) - more work with pexp()! For (b), you’ll need to find the mean and the
standard deviation, and then translate “the probability that distance exceeds the mean
distance by more than 2 standard deviations” into a format you can work with.
Hint: If you can go straight to what the pexp arguments would be, great! If not, start with
what that looks like in terms of multiple P( X < x) statements.

5. Let $X denote the transfer time …

You’re given the mean and standard deviation for this distribution, so you’re going to need
to work backwards to find the α and β parameters.
Once you have those, it’s our probability questions just like the problems above, but with
gamma this time! pgamma is your friend here.

6. Suppose the proportion X of surface area …

Beta distribution! You’ll need to look up the formula for the expectation and variance of the
distribution for (a), you’ll need pbeta for (b) and (c), and you’ll need to think about what
(d) is asking you and how you can find that information.