Worksheet 10:

Poisson Distribution
Ben Lim
STAT 1030 - Statistics for Business
September 30, 2016

1. Suppose that I fall sick an average of 12 times each year. Me falling sick in any time
period will not a↵ect the probability of me falling sick in any other time period. Assume
that a month is exactly 1/12 of a year.

(a) *Over any given month, what is the probability that I don’t fall sick at all?
(0.3679)
(b) *Over a given month, what is the probability that I fall sick more than once?
(0.2642)
(c) What is the probability that I fall sick at least once in exactly 8 of the 12 months?
(Hint: the months are independent of each other, and therefore we can use the ??
distribution.) (0.2311)

2. At a customer call center, each call center employee has customer complaints coming
in at an average of 2 per hour. We observe the activities of the employees at the call
center for a period of 45 minutes. Calls are randomly assigned to employees, so that
the employees’ activities are independent of each other.

(a) *Let Y be the random variable denoting the number of calls that come in over
the 45-minute period for a selected
p employee. What is the expected value and
standard deviation of Y ? (1.5, 1.5)
(b) What is the probability that an employee receives no new calls during this 45-
minute period? (0.2231)
(c) *An employee is overwhelmed if more than 1 call comes in over the 45-minute
period. What is the probability that an employee is overwhelmed? (0.4422)
(d) *If we observe 5 employees, what is the probability that more than one is over-
whelmed over the 45-minute period? (0.7319)

3. Suppose I live near a hospital. Ambulances pass by my house at a rate of 2 every hour.
Suppose that occurences of ambulances are independent between time periods, and no
two ambulances pass by my house at the same time.

1
(a) Let X be the number of ambulances that pass by my house in the next two hours.
What is the expected value and variance of X? (4, 4)
(b) *What is the probability that exactly two ambulances pass by my house in the
next two hours? (0.1465)
(c) *Find the probability that exactly one ambulance passed by my house every hour
in the next two hours. (0.07326)
(d) Given that exactly two ambulances passed by my house in a 2-hour period, what
is the probability the first passed in the first one-hour period, and the second in
the next one-hour period? (0.5)