STAT 251: PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS

TUTORIAL SHEETS

WEEK 2

1. A lot of 100 semiconductor chips contains 20 that are defective. Two are selected
randomly, without replacement, from the lot.

a) What is the probability that the first one selected is defective?

b) What is the probability that the second one selected is defective given that the
first one was defective?
c) What is the probability that both are defective?
d) How does the answer to part (b) change if chips selected were replaced prior to
the next selection?

2. A public health researcher examines the medical records of a group of 635 men who
died in 1999 and discovers that 160 of the men died from causes related to heart dis-
ease. Moreover, 275 of the 635 men had at least one parent who suffered from heart
disease, and, of these 275 men, 95 died from causes related to heart disease.
Determine the probability that a man randomly selected from this group died of causes
not related to heart disease and that neither of his parents suffered from heart disease.

3. A batch of 350 samples of rejuvenated mitochondria contains 8 that are mutated (or
defective). Two are selected from the batch, at random, without replacement.

a) What is the probability that the second one selected is defective given that the
first one was defective?

b) What is the probability that both are defective?

c) What is the probability that both are acceptable?

4. An urn contains 10 balls: 4 red and 6 blue. A second urn contains 16 red balls and an
unknown number of blue balls. A single ball is drawn from each urn. The probability
that both balls are the same color is 0.44.
Calculate the number of blue balls in the second urn.
5. Decide whether a discrete or continuous random variable is the best model for each of
the following variables:
– Weight of grain produced per acre (Continuous)
– Number of road traffic accidents per year in Accra (Discrete)
– Distance between two towns (Continuous)
– Length of time to write an examination (Continuous)
6. Given

x 1 2 3 4
1 1 1
P (x) 4
c 2 8

a) Find the value of the constant c.

b) Find:
(i) P (X > 1) (ii) P (0 < X < 2) (iii) P (X ≥ 2)

7. Show that (
1 2
9
x if 0 < x < 3
f (x) =
0 elsewhere
Find: ‘

a) is the pdf of a continuous random variable X.

b) Find:

(i) P (X ≤ 2) (ii) P (X > 1) (iii) P (2 ≤ X ≤ 3)

8. A continuous random variable X has the p.d.f.

(
1 2
x if − 1 < x < 2,
f (x) = 3
0 elsewhere

a) Find the distribution function of X and sketch its graph.

b) P (o < X ≤ 1).
9. ) Compute the expected value and standard deviation of the random variable, X with
the following probability distribution:

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