NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

SEMESTER I, 2022/2023

MA2116/ST2131 Probability Tutorial 2

1. Organizers of a three-day conference are considering food items for lunch. The three avail-
able options are fish, chicken or beef. Set up a set as the sample space for all possibilities.
How would the set change if the organizers insist that the same food item not be served on
two consecutive days?

2. A hospital administrator codes incoming patients suffering gunshot wounds according to

whether they have insurance (coding 1 if they do and 0 if they do not) and according to their
condition, which is rated as good (g ), fair ( f ), or serious (s). Consider an experiment that
consists of the coding of such a patient.
(i) Give the sample space of this experiment.
(ii) Let A be the event that the patient is in serious condition. Specify the outcomes in A.
(iii) Let B be the event that the patient is uninsured. Specify the outcomes in B .
(iv) Give all the outcomes in the event B c ∪ A.

3. Prove the distributive laws:

∞
[
µ∞
[
¶ ∞
\
µ ∞
\
¶
(E ∩ F n ) = E ∩ Fn and (E ∪ F n ) = E ∪ Fn .
n=1 n=1 n=1 n=1

4. In a school, 75% of students are involved in sports, 50% are involved in cultural activities,
and 12.5% are involved in neither. Calculate the probability that a student is involved in
(i) either sports or in cultural activities (or both).
(ii) both sports and cultural activities.
(iii) cultural activities but not sports.

5. A certain town with a population of 100 000 has 3 newspapers: I, II, and III. The proportions
of townspeople who read these papers are as follows:
I: 10% II: 30% III: 5%
I and II: 8% I and III: 2% II and III: 4% I and II and III: 1%
(The list tells us, for instance, that 8 000 people read newspapers I and II.)
(i) Find the number of people who read only one newspaper.
1
 MA2116/ST2131 PROBABILITY TUTORIAL 2 2

(ii) How many people read at least two newspapers?

(iii) If I and III are morning papers and II is an evening paper, how many people read at least
one morning paper plus an evening paper?
(iv) How many people do not read any newspapers?
(v) How many people read only one morning paper and one evening paper?

6. Suppose that you are playing blackjack against a dealer. In a freshly shuffled deck, what is
the probability that neither you nor the dealer is dealt a blackjack.

7. 25 people, consisting of 15 women and 10 men are lined up in a random order. Find the
probability that the 9th women to appear is in position 17.

8. An urn contains 1 white and 2n − 1 black balls. Players A and B withdraw balls from the urn
consecutively until the white ball is selected. (A draws the first ball, then B , and so on.)
(i) If there is no replacement of the ball drawn, find the probability that A selects the white
ball.
(ii) If the balls are replaced after drawing, find the probability that A selects the white ball.

9. An urn contains n white and m black balls. They are withdrawn one at a time (without re-
placement) until a total of r (r ≤ n) white balls have been withdrawn. Find the probability
that a total of k balls are withdrawn.

10. Let E 1 , E 2 , . . . , E n be a sequence of events. Prove that

à !
n
[ Xn X
P Ei ≥ P (E i ) − P (E i E j ).
i =1 i =1 i<j
 MA2116/ST2131 PROBABILITY TUTORIAL 2 3

Answers and Hints:

1. (i) |S| = 27, (ii) |S| = 12.

2. (i) |S| = 6, (ii) |A| = 2, (iii) |B | = 3, (iv) |B c ∪ A| = 4.

3. x ∈ ∞
S T∞
n=1 E n ⇔ x ∈ E n for some n, and x ∈ n=1 E n ⇔ x ∈ E n for all n. The second identity can
be proved from the first by using De Morgan’s law.

4. (i) Use De Morgan’s law, 0.875, (ii) use inclusion-exclusion identity, 0.375, (iii) 0.125.

5. Note that for any event A, P (A) = |A|/100 000; so |A| = 100 000 P (A). Draw three circles indi-
cating people reading news papers I, II, III respectively. Fill in the probability for each of the
8 regions using the given information. (i) 20 000, (ii) 12 000, (iii) 11 000, (iv) 68 000, (iv) 10 000.

6. A deck of cards consists of 52 cards (no jokers), and a blackjack consists an ace and one card
32
from 10, J, Q, or K. The probability that one player gets a blackjack is 663
. Then use inclusion-
11311
exclusion identity to get the desired probability 12495 .

7. There are 8 women in the among the first 16 people, and 6 women along the last 8 people,
819
7429
.
1
8. (i) Let E i be the event that A gets white in his i th drawn, i = 1, . . . , n. Show that P (E i ) = 2n .
Then the desired probability is 12 . (ii) Let F n be the event that A gets white in his i th drawn, i =
1, 2, . . . . Show that P (F i ) = (2n − 1)2i −2 /(2n)2i −1 . Then the desired probability is 2n/(4n − 1).

9. k−1
¡ ¢¡m+n−k ¢ ¡m+n ¢
r −1 n−r / n .

10. Let F i be the event that E i occurs but none of E 1 , . . . , E i −1 occurs. Then F i and F ic E i are mu-
tually exclusive with union E i . Note also that F ic E i = ij−1
S
E E . One proves that P (E i ) ≤
=1 i j
Pi −1
P (F i ) + j =1 P (E i E j ). Recall that F 1 , . . . , F n are mutually exclusive with union ni=1 E i . Sum-
S

ming over i = 1, . . . , n yields the desired inequality.