Introduction to Probability

Tutorial 5

1. A players pays $1 to play a game where three fair dice are rolled. If three 6s are obtained, the player
wins $500. Otherwise the player wins nothing. What are the expected net winnings of this game?
Would you want to play this game? Does your answer depend upon how many times you can play
the game? 1.3148

2. Suppose that the random variable X takes the values -2, 1, 4 and 6 with probability values 1/3, 1/6,
1/3 and 1/6 respectively.

(a) Find the expectation of X . E(X) = 11/6

(b) Find the variance of X using the formula 341/36

Var(X) = E((X − E(X))2 ).

(c) Find the variance of X using the formula

Var(X) = E(X 2 ) − (E(X))2 .

3. Suppose that you are organizing the game described in slide 7 of Lecture 9, where you charge players
$2 to roll two dice, and then you pay them the dierence in the score.
Var(X) = 2.0697
(a) What is the variance in your prot from each game? If you are playing a game in which you
have positive expected winnings, would you prefer a small or a large variance in the winnings? Small
(b) If you x the dice so that each die has a probability of 0.2 of scoring a 3 and equal probability
of 0.16 of scoring the other ve numbers, do your expected winnings increase beyond 6 cents
per game? Is it a surprise? E(X) = 1.9072 => E(Winning) = 0.0928

√
4. A random variable X has a probability density function f (x) = A/ x for 3 ≤ x ≤ 4.
(a) What is the value of A? 1.866
(b) What is the cumulative distribution function of X ? F(x) = 3.732(√x - 3)
(c) What is the expected value of X ? 3.4879
(d) What is the standard deviation of X ? 0.29
(e) What is the median of X ? X = 3.482

5. Consider the Air Conditioner Maintenance Example in Lecture 10.

(a) Suppose that a location has only one air conditioner that needs servicing. What is the
conditional probability mass function of the service time required? P (X=1|Y=1) = 3/8
What are the conditional expectation and standard deviation of the service time? P (X=2|Y=1) = 1/4
P (X=3|Y=1) = 7/32
E(X|Y=1) = 2.156 P (X=4|Y=1) = 5/32
STD(X) = 1.0933
1
 P(Y=1|X=2)= 1/3
P(Y=2|X=2)= 5/8
P(Y=3|X=2)= 1/24
(b) Suppose that a location requires a service time of 2 hours. What is the conditional probability
mass function of the number of air conditioner units serviced?
What are the conditional expectation and standard deviation of the number of air conditioner
units serviced? E(Y|X=2) = 1.708

6. (MATLAB) Redo Exercise 1 using simulation.

7. (MATLAB) Redo Exercise 3(b) using simulation.