1. The probability is 0.

10 that ball bearings in a machine component will fail under certain

adverse conditions of load and temperature. If a component containing eleven ball bear-
ings must have at least eight of them functioning to operate under the adverse conditions,
what is the probability that it will break down?
2. The great English diarist Samuel Pepys asked his friend Sir Isaac Newton the following
question: Is it more likely to get at least one 6 when six dice are rolled, at least two 6’s
when twelve dice are rolled, or at least three 6’s when eighteen dice are rolled? After
considerable correspondence Newton convinced the skeptical Pepys that the first event is
the most likely. Compute the three probabilities.
3. Use
Pn then
expansion of (x + y)n to verify that the binomial probabilities sum to 1; that is,
k n−k
k=0 k p (1 − p) .
4. Country A inadvertently launches ten guided missiles – six armed with nuclear warheads
– at Country B. In response, Country B fires seven antiballistic missiles, each of which
will destroy exactly one of the incoming rockets. The antiballistic missiles have no way
of detecting, though, which of the ten rockets are carrying nuclear warheads. What are
the chances that Country B will be hit by at least one nuclear missile?
5. A display case contains thirty-five gems, of which ten are real diamonds and twenty-five
are fake diamonds. A burglar removes four gems at random, one at a time and without
replacement. What is the probability that the last gem she steals is the second real
diamond in the set of four?
6. Show directly that the set of probabilities associated with the hypergeometric distribution
sum to 1.
(Hint: Expand the identity (1 + t)N = (1 + t)r (1 + t)N −r and equate coefficients.)
7. Suppose that r of N chips are red. Divide the chips into three groups of sizes n1 , n2
and n3 , where n1 + n2 + n3 = N . Generalize the hypergeometric distribution to find the
probability that the first group contains r1 red chips, the second group r2 red chips, and
the third group r3 red chips, where r1 + r2 + r3 = r.
8. A fair coin is tossed four times. Let X be the number of heads in the tosses minus the
number of tails. Find pX (k).
9. Records show that 128 new students have just entered a certain NSW school. Of those
128, a total of 24 are not adequately vaccinated. The schools’ physician has scheduled a
day for students to receive whatever shots they might need. On any given day, though,
12.5% of the schools’ students are likely to be absent. How many new students, then, can
be expected to remain inadequately vaccinated?
10. Determine the expected value and the variance of a hypergeometric random variable.
11. An urn contains five chips, two red and three white. Suppose that two are drawn out at
random, with replacement. Let X denote the number of red chips in the sample. Find
Var(X).

1
12. Ten equally qualified applicants, six women and four men, apply for three lab technician
positions. Unable to justify choosing any of the applicants over all the others, the person-
nel director decides to select the three at random. Let X denote the number of women
hired. Compute the standard deviation of X.

13. If a typist averages one misspelling in every 3250 words, what are the chances that a
6000-word report is free of all such errors?

(a) Find this probability using exact binomial distribution.

(b) Find this probability using the Poisson approximation. Compare the answer with
(a) and comment on the similarity (or dissimilarity).

14. A medical study recently documented that 905 mistakes were made among the 289,411
prescriptions written during one year at a large metropolitan teaching hospital. Suppose a
patient is admitted with a condition serious enough to warrant 10 different prescriptions.
Approximate the probability that at least one will contain an error.

15. A random sample of 356 seniors enrolled at the University of Western Australia was
categorized according to X, the number of times they had changed majors. Based on the
summary of that information shown in the following table, would you conclude that X
can be treated as a Poisson random variable?

Number of Major Changes Frequency

0 237
1 90
2 22
3 7