Practice Problems in Chapter 2

Problem 1: Suppose we flip a fair coin three times and record the faces (head or tail) one by one.

(a) What are the possible outcomes of the experiment?

(b) What is the probability of obtaining one head and 2 tails?

Problem 2: The teacher gives a true-false quiz with 5 questions.

a) Show that the number of possible outcomes for the sample space of possible sequences of 5
answers is 32.

b) With random guessing, show that the probability of getting at least one question wrong is
0.96875.

Problem 3: A standard card deck has 52 cards consisting of 26 black and 26 red cards. Three cards are
dealt from a shuffled deck without replacement.

a) [True or false] The probability of being dealt 3 black cards is 0.5 × 0.5 × 0.5 = 0.125. If true,
explain why. If false, show how to get the correct probability.

b) Let A = first card red and B = second card red.

Are A and B independent? Explain why or why not.

c) Answer part a) and b) again, if each card is replaced in the deck after being dealt.

Problem 4 (Benford’s Law 本福特定律): When we observe the figures in newspaper or magazine, the
beginning digit follows the Benford’s Law -- in the sense that the digit “1” occurs more often than other
digits, with the probability distribution of the beginning digit approximately:

a) If we were to randomly pick one of the digits between 1 and 9 using a random number table or
software, what is the probability for each digit?

b) When people attempt to fake numbers, there’s a tendency to use 5 or 6 as the initial digit more
often than predicted by Benford’s law. What is the probability of 5 or 6 as the first digit by (i)
Benford’s law, (ii) random selection?
Problem 5: [True or false] When you flip a fair coin ten times, you are more likely to get the sequence
HTHTHTHTHT than the sequence HHHHHTTTTT.

Problem 6: [True or false] When you flip a fair coin twice, there are three things that can happen: 0
heads, 1 head, or 2 heads. Since there are three possible outcomes, they each have probability 1/3.

Problem 7: Suppose that A, B and C are three independent events such that Pr(A) = 1/4, Pr(B) = 1/3, and
Pr(C) = 1/2.

(a) What is the probability that none of these three events will occur?

(b) What is the probability that exactly one of these three events will occur?

Problem 8: Suppose a birth defect has a recessive form of inheritance. In a study population, the
recessive gene (隱性基因) ‘a’ initially has a prevalence (傳播) of 25%.

A subject has the birth defect if both maternal and paternal genes are of recessive gene ‘a’.

a) What is the probability that an individual will have the birth defect, assuming maternal and
paternal genes are inherited independently?

After 10 generations, a lot of inbreeding has taken place between two subpopulations (A and B) within
the population. Suppose the prevalence of recessive gene for population A and B are 40% and 10%
respectively.

b) Suppose that 25% of marriages are AA (both from population A), 65% BB and 10% AB. What is
the probability of a birth defect in the next generation?

c) Suppose that a baby is born with a birth defect, but the baby’s ancestry is unknown. What is the
probability that the baby will have (i) both parents from population A, (ii) both parents from
population B, or (iii) mix ancestry?

Problem 9: A card is selected randomly from an ordinary deck of 52 cards. Consider the following
events: A = Ace,

B = Face card (i.e. Jack/Queen/King), and C = Club(♣).

a) Verify that the only pair of mutually exclusive events is A and B.

b) What is Pr(B ∩ C)?

Problem 10: If A and B are independent, with Pr(A)=0.5 and Pr(B)=0.4. What is the value of Pr(Ac  Bc)?

(a) 0.2 (b) 0.3 (c) 0.7 (d) 0.8

Problem 11: Suppose a family has 3 children. Let

A be the event that all the children are of the same sex, and

B be the event that at least 2 of them are males.

Assume that it’s equally likely for male and female to be born.

(a) Are events A and B mutually exclusive?

(b) Are events A and B independent?

Problem 12: Suppose we roll two dice, let

A be the event that the first die gives an odd number,

B be the event that the second die gives an even number,

C be the event that the sum of the two dice is even.

(a) Are events A and C independent?

(b) Express the events C by events A and B based on relationships such as union, intersection and
complement.

Problem 13: Two students A and B are both registered for a certain course. Assume that

(i) Student A attends class 80% of the time,

(ii) Student B attends class 60% of the time, and

(iii) the absences of the two students are independent.

If at least one of the two students is in class on a given day, what is the probability that A is in class on
that day?

Problem 14: Suppose that 2% of the people in a town have a particular type of disease. A test designed
to detect the disease has the following properties: If a person has the disease, the test will detect it with
probability 0.99. If the person does not have the disease, the test will indicate the disease with
probability 0.005.

(a) What is the probability that the test will indicate the disease for a random person?

(b) If the test indicates a person has the disease, what is the probability that the person actually has
the disease?
 (c) What is the relative risk of having the disease given positive test indication? Do you think that
the test is an effective screening test?

Problem 15: Suppose the genotypes of the grandparents are as follow:

How likely their grandchild has phenotype B?