NON –MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE EVENTS

These are events that are not mutually exclusive and can occur simultaneously. If A and B are non-mutually
exclusive events then :

In this case

Real life situation which describe non-mutually exclusive events are as follows:

 Turning left and scratching your head can happen at the same time

 King and hearts are non –mutually exclusive events because we can have a king of hearts

Questions:

1. An integer between 1 and 6 (ie 1,2,3,4,5,6) is chosen at random. What is the probability that is even or
divisible by 3?
2. A group of employees consists of both men and women, some of whom are postgraduates while the others
are graduates as per the following details:
postgraduates Graduates Total
Male 20 30 50
Female 15 10 25
Total 35 40 75
If an employee is selected at random, what is the probability of picking a male or a postgraduate?
3. Two fair dice are rolled together and the dot number on each upper face of each die is noted. Construct a
diagram that shows all possible simple events. In an experiment, let X =event that the two dice show up the
same dot number, let Y=event that the sum of the dot numbers from both dice is even. Find
INDEPENDENT EVENTS
Events that can happen together but have no influence on each other. If A and B are independent events then the
probability that they happen together is given by:

Questions:
1. A die is rolled and a coin is tossed, find the probability that a die shows an odd number and a coin show a head
2. Two cards are chosen at random from a deck of 52 cards without replacement. What is the probability of
choosing two Jacks?
3. A die is thrown twice, find the probability of obtaining a 4 on the first throw and an odd number on the second
throw
4. A firm has tended for two independent contracts. It is estimated that it has probability of 0.4 of obtaining
contract A and probability of 0.1 of obtaining contract B, find the probability that
(i) Obtain both contracts
(ii) Neither of the contracts
(iii) Obtain exactly one contract

CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY
This is the probability of an event occurring given that another event has already occurred.
The probability that an event A occurs, given that event B has already occurred is given by :
The probability that an event A occurs, given that event B has already occurred is given by :

Note:

Multiplication Rule

When two events A and B are dependent, the probability of both occurring is given by:

Questions:

1. A math teacher gave her class two tests. 25% of the class passed both tests and 42% of the class passed the
first test. What is the probability that those who passed the first test also passed the second test?

2. The probability that it is Friday and that a student is absent is 0.03 . Since there are 5 school days in a week,
the probability that it is Friday is0.2. What is the probability that a student is absent given that today is
Friday?

3. A financial services firm carries advertising in a newspaper. The firm estimates that 60% of the people in
the potential area read the newspaper. The research further shows that 85% of the people who read the
newspaper remember seeing the advertisement when questioned about it afterwards. What percentage of
the people in the firm’s potential market see and remember the advertisement?

4. Of all students in a business school, 30% specialize in accounting and finance and 40% specialize in
finance. What is the probability that a student specializes in accounting given that the student specializes in
finance?

5. In a musical school, 18% of all students play the piano and the guitar and 32% of all students play only the
piano. What is the probability that a student plays the guitar given that the student play the piano?

PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION

These are situations where it becomes very difficulty to find probability of values by variables defined under those
situations. However the task may be simplified by first modeling those variables using special probability
distributions. After that, probabilities of different values taken by the variables may be determined from the
probability distribution concerned.

Examples of such distributions are binomial distribution, Poison distribution , Normal distributions etc

Binomial distribution

Bi-means two (like a bicyle has two wheels-so this is about things with two results). For example success/fail ,
hit /miss, defective /non-defective etc

Binomial experiment is an experiment with fixed number of independent trials , each of which can only have two
possible outcomes. Example
  Tossing a coin 20 times to determine the number of times that tails will occur

 Asking 200 people if they watch BBC news

 Rolling a die to see if a 5 appear

The experiment is referred to as a Bernoulli process. The Bernoulli process has the following characteristics:
a. Each experiment has only two possible outcomes
b. The probability of success (favourable outcome) remains fixed over time . For example the probability of
a fair coin turning up heads when tossed remains 0.5
c. The experiments are statistically independent, that is, the outcome of an experiment is not affected by the
outcome of the preceding experiment.
d. In a binomial distribution, the probability of success event is denoted by a symbol p and the outcome of
an unfavourable event is denoted by a symbol q . Since there are only two outcome p  q  1
e. The mean of the distribution is np , where n is the number of experiments
f. npq while the variance is npq
The standard deviation is
g. The probability of getting x successes in n experiments is

Where
n!
nCx  and x=0, 1, 2,3,…being the number of success.
x!( n  x)!
Questions:

1. A machine produces 5 % defectives. If five parts are taken at random, what is the probability that 3 will be
non- defective?
2. The probability that a patient recovers from eukemia is 0.4. If 10 people are known to have contracted this
disease. What is the probability that :
a. At least 3 of them survive
b. Exactly 5 of them (patients) survive
c. At most 3 patients survive
3. Assuming that the probability that any of six telephone lines engaged at an instant is 0.25. Calculate the
probability:-
a. A least one of the line is engaged
b. All six lines are engaged
c. At most two lines are engaged
4. In a given area, the probability that a person is exposed to an advertisement of a paper company is 0.2, if
persons are randomly chosen from among the population in the area:
(a) What is the probability that at least 4 of them are exposed to the advertisement?
(b) What is the probability tthat at most 2 are exposed for the advertisement?

5. The probability of a cricketer hitting a four in an over is 0.3 . If a cricketer remains not out during an over,
what is the probability that he will hit a four 3 or fewer times? Note assume that there is no extra bowl in
that over
6. If a student randomly guesses at five multiple choice questions, find the probability that the student gets
more than one correct. Each question has five possible choices
7. A coin is tossed. Determine the mean and the standard deviation for the number of heads obtained in 4
tosses

POISON DISTRIBUTION

The distribution is applicable to situations where the number of experiments is very large and the probability of
occurrence is very small. For instance , number of accidents occurring on a stretch of road. Every moving object
on the road- be it a four-wheeler , a two wheeler, a pedestrian or any kind of traffic that moves on our roads- is a
 potential accident. However, the number of accidents that actually take place is very small. The distribution
applies to the number of patients reporting to an emergency ward of a hospital, the number of cars arriving for
service at a service station, number of customers arriving at a shopping mail, and so on. Arrivals in any queuing
stystem generally follow this distribution. The distribution is named after Simeon Denis Poison, a Frenchman,
who developed it.
In this distribution, the exact number of experiments performed is not known, but the mean number of
occurrences of the event over a period of time are known. For instance, patients may arrive at a clinic, on an
average, five per hour, but we do not know the number of potential patients that could have arrived in that hour.
It is also assumed that the rate of arrival of 5 patients per hour can be expressed as 5/60 patients per minute, and
so on. If we divide the time interval to one second, we find that:
a. The probability that exactly one patient will arrive per second is very small and is constant for every one –
second interval
b. The probability that two or more patients will arrive within a one –second interval is so small that it can be
assumed to be zero
c. The number of patients that arrive in agiven one –second interval is independent of the time at which that
one- second interval occurs
d. The number of arrivals in any one –second interval is not dependent on the number of arrivals in any other
one –second interval.

When situations conform to the above four conditions, we can apply the Poison distribution to them. The
characteristics of the distribution are as follows:

a) The average rate of occurrence of the event over a period of time is known and is denoted by
 (lambda)
b) The total number of experiments performed is not known
c) The mean of the distribution is given by   np
d) The standard deviation of the distribution is given by 
e) The probability of exactly x occurrences is given by:

 x xe  
P ( x)  where e  2.71828 (the base of Naperian or natural log system or bankers
x!
constant)
Questions:

1. If the average rate of arrivals of patients at a clinic is 5 per hour, find the probability of:
(b) Two patients or less arriving in a hour.
(c) Exactly three patients arriving in an hour.
(d) More than three patients arriving in an hour.
2. SWIZZ Company produces bolts and other items. The machine shop contains a number of machines. The
average number of machine breakdowns per hour is 2. One machine maintenance technician is attached
permanently to the shop but calls for assistance when there are more than 2 breakdowns in any given hour.
Determine the probability of having:

(a) More tthan 2 breakdowns

(b) At most 3 breakdowns

(c) During a 120 hour week, how many times on average would the technician call for assistance?

3. Patients arrive at a doctor surgery from 8am at an average rate of one in five minutes. The waiting room
hold 12 people beyond which some have to remain outside. What is the probability that the room will be
full when the doctor arrive at 9am.
4. Golden Era is a textile mill which produces cotton materials. The number of defects in a cotton roll follows
a poison distribution. The average number of defects in 50 metres of cloth is 1.2
 (a) Determine the probability of exactly three defects in 150 metres of cloth

(b) Determine the probability of at least two defects in 100 metres of cloth

5. A company launched a new website. According to its analysis, the number of visitors to a web server per
minute follows the poison distribution. Assuming the average vistors per minute as 4, determine the
probability of two or more persons visting in a minute.

NORMAL DISTRIBUTION

The normal distribution is a continuous probability distribution and is of great importance and utility to managers.
The distribution deals with the data that can be measured and can assume any value. If fits the actual observed
frequency distribution of many naturally observed phenomena, including human characteristics such as height,
weight, intelligence quotient; outputs from physical processes and other measures of interest to managers. The
normal distribution is also the basis of all sampling and making inferences from samples. It has applications in
quality control, eetc. It is also referred to as the Guassian distribution after the eighteenth century mathematician-
astronomer Karl Guass.
The normal distribution is a symmetrical distribution and is shown diagrammatically below:

The characteristics of normal distribution are as follows:

a. The distribution has a single peak, that is , it is unimodal
b. It is bell shaped and symmetrical about the mean.
c. The mean, median and mode lie in the center of the distribution and have the same value.
d. The curve is asymptotic to the horizontal axis. It is an open ended distribution.
e. The distribution can be defined completely by two parameters- the mean represented by u (mu ) and
standard deviation represented by  (sigma ) .
Most real life populations do not extend for ever on both sides of the mean, but the normal distribution is a
convenient approximation. The normal distributions is not a single curve but a family of curves.

The normal distribution is a continuous probability distribution. This has several implications for probability.

 The total area under the normal curve is equal to 1.

 The probability that a normal random variable X equals any particular value is 0.
STANDARDIZED NORMAL DISTRIBUTION

A standard normal distribution is a normal distribution having a mean of zero (0) and standard deviation of one (1).
A standard normal variable is normally denoted by letter Z and defined as:

That is Z is following a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and variance of 1, now if we need to find probabilities
under any normal distribution, we first have to change it to this distribution.

The conversion formula from normal distribution to standard normal distribution is given by:

Reading Probabilities under standard Normal distribution

Procedures:

1. Check whether the given value is standardized or not, if not go to step 2 if yes go to step 3

2. Change the normal distribution under consideration to standard normal one

3. Draw the normal distribution curve

4. Shade the portion you want to read

5. Read the value of probability using calculator either at R, P or Q

6. Manipulate the figures if necessary either by adding or subtracting

7. State the value of the probability required

Questions:

1. Find the following probabilities:

(a) P(Z > 1.06) , (b) P(Z < -2.15) , (c) P(1.06 < Z < 4.00) ,(d) P(-1.06 < Z < 4.00) , (e) P(Z<2.00), (f)
P(z>-2.15)

2. Let there be a normal random variable with a mean 3 and variance 4. Compute the probability of

3. The download time of a resource web page is normally distributed with a mean of 6.5 seconds and a standard
deviation of 2.3 seconds.
(i) What proportion of page downloads take less than 5 seconds
(ii) What is the probability that the download time will be between 4 and 10 seconds?
4. A survey was conducted to measure the height of Tanzanian females of the age group 21-30. The respondents’
heights were normally distributed with a mean of 60 inches and a standard deviation of 5 inches. A study participant
is randomly selected.
(a) Determine the probability of a female being between 45 and 65 inches
(b) Determine the probability of the female being more than 60 inches tall
(c) Determine the probability of the female being less than 56 inches tall
5. In a certain departmental store, a supplier’s monthly statement show an average balance of TZS 1200 million and
standard deviation of TZS 400 million. Assuming that the account balances are normally distributed:

(a) What percentage of the accounts is below TZS 1500 million?

(b) What percentage of the accounts is over TZS 1500 million?

(c) What percentage of the accounts is between TZS 1000 million and TZS 1500 million?