BAYES / CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY PRACTICE QUESTIONS

QUESTION 1

A mail-order house employs three stock clerks, U, V and W who pull items from shelves
and assemble them for subsequent verification packaging. U makes a mistake in an
order (gets a wrong item or the wrong quantity) one time in a hundred, V makes a
mistake in an order five times in a hundred, and W makes a mistake in an order three
times in a hundred. If U, V and W fill, respectively 30, 40 and 30 percent of all orders,
what are the probabilities that:
(a) a mistake will be made in an order? (3 marks)

(b) if a mistake is made in an order, the order was filled by U? (4

marks)

QUESTION 2

In a certain community, 8% of all adults have diabetes. If a health service in the community

correctly diagnoses 95% of all adults with diabetes as having the disease and incorrectly

diagnoses 2% of all adults without diabetes as having the disease, find the probability that

(i) the community health service will diagnose an adult as having diabetes;

(2 marks)

(ii) an adult diagnosed by the health service as having diabetes actually has the disease.

(4 marks)

QUESTION 3

A driver has three routes to get from city A to city B. There is an 80% probability of

encountering a traffic jam on route 1, a 60% probability on route 2, and a 30% probability on route 3.
Because of other factors, such as distance and speed limits, the driver uses route 1 fifty percent of
the time, route 2 thirty percent, and route 3 twenty percent of the time.

(a) What is the probability that this driver is in a traffic jam travelling from city A to city B?
(3 marks)
 (b) If the driver calls the dispatcher to inform him that she is in a traffic jam, find the probability that
she has selected route 1.
(4 marks)

QUESTION 4

(a) An insurance company believes that people can be divided into two classes:
those who are accident prone and those who are not. Their statistics show

that an accident-prone person will have an accident at sometime within a

fixed 1-year period with probability 0.4, whereas this probability decreases

to 0.2 for a non-accident prone person. If we assume that 30% of the population

is accident prone,

(i) What is the probability that a new policyholder will have an accident
within a year of purchasing a policy? (2 marks)

(ii) Suppose that a new policyholder has an accident within a year of

purchasing the policy. What is the probability that he or she is accident

prone? (4 marks)