UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, JAMAICA

FACULTY: SCIENCE AND SPORT

SCHOOL : MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS

Final Examination: Semester 2, Academic Year 2016/17

Module Name: Engineering Statistics

Module Code: STA2023

Date: May, 2017

Theory/ Practical: Theory

Groups: B Eng 2IND/BEng 2M/ BEng2M (CA) / B Eng 2M (NA)

BEng2E (FT) / B Eng 2, C4-PD/ B Eng2 E (ART),
BScASC1

Duration: 2 Hours

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Answer any FOUR (4) questions.

2. All working must be clearly shown.

3. This question paper contains 6 pages.

4. Please answer each question on a new page.

5. Marks allotted for parts of questions are shown in brackets.

6. Formula tables will be provided.

1
DO NOT TURN THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD TO DO SO
QUESTION NO. 1

(a) Petro Caribbean Limited is a company which engages in

large-scale oil exploration. The productiveness of new
wells is related to the geologic structure at the drilling sites.
Past experience shows that there is a 0.4 probability of a
Type A structure, provided that a well is productive. The
company also knows that 30% of all wells drilled are productive.
What is the probability that
(i) a well will be drilled at a site with a Type A
structure and will be productive?
(ii) a well will be productive only?

[3+2 marks]

(b) If A and B are independent events, show that are also

independent.
[4 marks]

(c ) Nails are manufactured by machines A, B and C. In the past, 5% of

those from A are defective, 2% of those from B are defective and 6%
of those from C are defective. In addition, machine A manufactures
40% of the nails, machine B manufactures 30% and machine C
manufactures the remainder.

(i) Find the probability that a nail is defective.

(ii) If the nail was defective, what is the probability that it was made
by machine B?
[3+3 marks]

QUESTION NO. 2

(a) Suppose it has been observed that, on average, 240 cars per hour
pass a specified point on a particular road in the morning rush
hour. Due to impending road works it is estimated that congestion
will occur close to the city centre if 3 or more cars pass the point in
any one minute. What is the probability that congestion will not occur?

[3 marks]

(b) Henrietta Davidson, director of quality control for the Kyoto Motor
Company, is conducting her monthly spot check of automatic
transmissions. In this procedure, 10 automatic transmissions are
selected at random and checked for manufacturing defects. Historically,
it has been found that 5% of the transmissions have such defects.
Find the probability that at most two of the selected transmissions will
have defects.

[3 marks]
(c ) The probability mass function of the Poissonl random variable X is
given by where x = 0, 1, 2, 3,…, n

Find expected value and variance of X.

[4 + 5 marks]

2
QUESTION NO. 3

(a) The dean of a graduate school of computing wishes to estimate the

proportion of BSCIT students enrolled who have access to a
personal computer outside the school (either at home or work). A
random sample of 150 students reveals that 135 have access to
a personal computer outside the school. Set up a 90% confidence interval
estimate of the proportion of all students who have access to a personal
computer outside the school.

[3 marks]

(b) NEPA requires that the power plant makes its investigation at three
strategically chosen locations, called stations. During one randomly
selected day in each of four months, a diver sent down to each of the
stations randomly samples a square meter area of the bottom and
counts the number of blades of the different types of grasses
present. The results are as follows for one important grass type:
Table 1
Stations

Month 1 2 3

May 28 31 53

June 25 22 61

July 37 30 56

August August 20 26 48

Test the null hypothesis that the mean number of blades found per
square meter per month are the same for these three stations at the
0.05 level of significance.

[12 marks]

, ,

3
QUESTION NO. 4

(a) The set of random variables are identically and independently

distributed with

[3 marks]
(b) A motor manufacturer wishes to replace steel suspension components
with aluminium components to save weight and thereby improve
performance and fuel consumption. Tensile strength tests are
carried out on randomly chosen samples of two possible components
before a final choice is made. The results are:
Table 2

Component Sample Mean Tensile Standard

Number size Strength deviation
(kg mm-2) (kg mm-2)
1 35 90 2.3

2 30 88 2.2

Is there any difference between the measured tensile strengths at the

5% level of significance?
[7 marks]
(c) The mean lifetime of electric light bulbs produced by a company
has in the past been 1,120 hours. A random sample of eighteen
electric light bulbs recently chosen from a supply of newly
produced bulbs showed a mean lifetime of 1,270 hours and a
standard deviation of 125 hours. At the 0.01 level of significance,
test whether the mean lifetime of the bulb has changed.

[5 marks]

QUESTION NO. 5

(a) The run time for written C-Programmes for Gaussian elimination
follows a normal distribution with a mean of 36 minutes and a
standard deviation of 11 minutes. For a C-Programme chosen
from Gaussian elimination files at random, find the probability that the
run time will be either less than 25 minutes or more than 47 minutes?
[5 marks]
(b ) The mileage C in thousands which car owners get with a certain
kind of tyre is a random variable, X, having probability density
function

Find the moment generating function of X. [5 marks]

(c ) The normal random variable X has a p.d.f defined by

4
 where are the parameters. Show that E(X) = .
[5 marks]
QUESTION NO. 6

(a) In this problem, Y = rent, X1 = number of rooms,

X2 = distance from downtown. The following results have been
obtained from a sample of 6 observations on rent, number of
rooms and distance from downtown.
∑Y = 2,985, ∑X1 = 18, ∑X2 = 21, ∑X1Y = 11,170,
∑X2Y = 8,535, ∑X1X2 = 50, , , ∑Y2
= 1,820,225.
The multiple-regression equation is
= 96.4581 + 136.4847X1 – 2.4035 X2 .

(i) Show that a = 96.4581 and b1 = 136.4847 using the results

given above..
(ii) Interpret the least squares estimate of the regression
parameter b1= 136.4847.
(iii) Predict for X1 = 2 and X2 = 2.

(b) Suppose that over an extended past period of time the slope of
the relationship between and X1 was 136.3547. The standard
error of the coefficient for b1, , is 0.103. Test at the 0.01 level of
significance if there has been a change in the value of b1 with a
sample size of 25.
[8+1 +1+ 5 marks]

Normal Equations

Test Statistic

where j = 1, 2,…, k

END OF PAPER

5
1