A machine that produces a special type of transistor (a component of computers) has a 2%

defective rate. The production is considered a random process where each transistor is
independent of the others.

(1) What is the probability that the 10th transistor produced is the first with a defect?

(2) What is the probability that the machine produces no defective transistors in a batch of
100?

(3) On average, how many transistors would you expect to be produced until the first with a
defect? What is the standard deviation?

(4) Another machine that also produces transistors has a 5% defective rate where each
transistor is produced independent of the others. On average how many transistors would
you expect to be produced with this machine before the first with a defect? What is the
standard deviation?

(5) Based on your answers to parts (c) and (d), how does increasing the probability of an
event affect the mean and standard deviation of the wait time until success?

Solution:

1. P=0.02P ( X=10 )q=1−0.02q=0.98 P ( x=10 )=q x −1. p¿ ( 0.98 )9 .0 .02¿ 0.01667

2. P ( x=0 ) ¿ q 100¿ 0.1326

3. Mean= ¿
1 1
p 0.02 ( )(
¿ 50 transistors Variance=
1 1
p p )
−1 S . D=√ Variance¿ √ ( 50 ) ( 50−1 )

¿ 49.50

4. p=0.05mean= ¿
1 1
p 0.05 √( )(
p p )
¿ 20 Standard deviation= 1 1 −1 ¿ √ 20 ×19¿ 19.49

5. Basing on the answers above, it is clear that when we increase the probability of an event
occurring, it leads to the decrease of the mean and the standard deviation of the events
that occur.

References.
The Organic Chemistry Tutor. (2019, June 9). Geometric Distribution - Probability, Mean,

Variance, & Standard Deviation [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=d5iAWPnrH6w

Illowsky, B., Dean, S., Birmajer, D., Blount, B., Boyd, S., Einsohn, M., Helmreich, Kenyon, L.,
Lee, S., & Taub, J. (2022). Introductory
statistics. openstax. https://openstax.org/details/books/introductory-statistics