TOPFAITH UNIVERSITY, MKPATAK

FACULTY OF COMPUTING AND APPLIED SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

BETA SEMESTER EXAMINATION FOR 2021/2022

COURSE TITLE: Probability
COURSE CODE: STA 121

DURATION: Three hours

INSTRUCTION: Answer all the questions in section ACODE:
COURSE and any two 121
MTH in section B

SECTION A : This section is compulsory.

1. a.) A fair die is rolled once. Find the probability of rolling an even number. (10 marks)
b.) Find the number of ways the letters of the word PROBABILITY can be permuted. (10 marks)
c.) In how many ways can a student select 3 out-of-faculty courses out of a possible 52
in a semester? (10 marks)
d.) In a certain school 80 students from law and engineering faculties were asked if they
favoured a ban on students staying beyond 9 p.m in the cafeteria. The results of the
survey are shown in the table below.

Students Favour Oppose No opinion

Law 15 27 8
Engineering 23 5 2

If a student is selected at random, find the probability that the student opposes the ban
given that he/she is in law faculty. (10 marks)

SECTION B : Answer any two questions in this section.

2. a.) A box contains 24 cellphones, four of which are defective. If 2 of the cellphones are
selected at random without replacement, find the probability that they are defective. (5 marks)
b.) In an office there are 3 secretaries, 4 accountants and 2 receptionists. If a committee
of 3 is to be formed, find the probability that one of each will be selected. (5 marks)
c.) The number of phones sold per day at a local shop is shown along with their
corresponding probabilities in the table below. Find the expected number of phones
the shop can sell per day.

Number of phones 0 1 2 3 4
Probability P(X) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.2
(5 marks)
3. a.) A research found that 40% of young Nigerans do not think that having education is
important to succeed in the business world. If a random sample of 5 Nigerians is
selected, find the probability that at most 3 people will agree with that statement. (5 marks)
b.) A study found that 4 out of 9 houses have internet connections. If 5 houses are selected
from the nine houses, find the probability that exactly 2 have internet connections. (5 marks)

c.) At Tyler’s Pizza Shop, Tyler found the probabilities that a customer will buy 0, 1, 2, 3,
or 4 pizzas in a day as shown in the distribution below. Calculate the standard deviation
of the distribution.
Number of Pizza 0 1 2 3 4
Probability P(X) 0.05 0.3 0.45 0.12 0.08
(5 marks)
4. a.) The average salary in a certain organisation is N85,900. If the average salaries are
normally distributed with a standard deviation of N11,000, find the probability that
a worker earns more than N75,000. (5 marks)
b.) If there are 300 typographical errors randomly distributed in a 500-page manuscript,
find the probability that a given page contains exactly three errors. (5 marks)

c.) Three cable TV channels, 220, 253 and 331, have quiz shows, comedies and dramas,
as their weekend programmes. The number of each is shown below.
Channel 220 Channel 253 Channel 331
Quiz show 5 2 1
Comedy 3 2 8
Drama 4 4 2

If a show is selected at random, find the probability that the show is shown on Channel 331
or it is a drama. (5 marks)

5. a.) A random variable X follows a binomial distribution with mean 3 and variance 2.
Find P(X = 7). (5 marks)
b.) The average age of CEOs is 56 years. Assume the variable is normally distributed.
If the standard deviation is 4 years, find the probability that the age of a randomly
selected CEO will be between 58 and 63 years old. (5 marks)
1
c.) Joy is taking 2 movies along on her vacation. With probability , she will like the
2
2 3
first movie; with probability , she will like the second movie; and with probability ,
5 10
she will like both movies. What is the probability that she will like neither movie? (5 marks)