Worksheet Unit 3: Probability distributions.

Business School EDEM, IGE 2024 , 9th Edition.

1. Show the probability distribution function of the face values of a single dice
when a fair dice is rolled.

2. What is the probability distribution function of the number of heads when a

fair coin is tossed

(a) Once.
(b) Four times.

3. Let the random variable X stand for the number of times that you will miss
class this semestre in Statistics I. Prepare a table that shows the probability
distribution and the cumulative probability distribution. (This is an open-
answer question).

4. The number of computers sold per day at Lando’s Computer Works is de-
fined by the following probability distribution:

X P (X)
0 0.05
1 0.1
2 0.2
3 0.2
4 0.2
5 0.15
6 0.1

Compute the following:

(a) P (3 ≤ X < 6),

(b) P (X > 3),
(c) P (X ≤ 4),
(d) P (2 < X ≤ 5).

5. Consider the probability distribution function

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 x P (x)
0 0.4
1 0.6

(a) Draw the probability distribution function.

(b) Calculate and draw the cumulative probability distribution.
(c) Find the mean of the random variable X.
(d) Compute the variance of X.

6. A company specializes in installing and servicing central-heating furnaces.

In the prewinter period, service calls may result in an order for a new fur-
nace. The following table shows estimated probabilities for the numbers of
new furnace orders generated in this way in the last two weeks of Septem-
ber:

Number of orders Probability

0 0.1
1 0.14
2 0.26
3 0.28
4 0.15
5 0.07

(a) Draw the probability distribution function.

(b) Calculate and draw the cumulative probability distribution.
(c) Find the probability that at least 3 orders will be generated in this
period.
(d) Compute the mean of the number of orders for new furnaces in this
2-week period.
(e) Compute the standard deviation of the number of orders for new fur-
naces in this 2-week period.

7. A very large shipment of parts contains 10% defective. Two parts are cho-
sen randomly from the shipment and analysed. Let the random variable X
denote the number of defectives found.

(a) Find the probability distribution function of X.

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 (b) Compute the mean and variance of the random variable X.

8. A shipment of 20 parts contains 2 defective. Two parts are chosen randomly

from the shipment and analysed. Let the random variable Y denote the
number of defectives found.

(a) Find the probability distribution function of Y . Explain why this dif-
fers from that of the random variable X of the last exercise.
(b) Compute the mean and variance of the random variable Y .

9. A public interest group hires students to request donations by telephone.

After a brief training period, students make calls to potentials donors and
are paid on a commission basis. Experience indicates that early on, these
students tend to have only modest success and that 70% of them give up their
jobs in their first two weeks of employment. The group hires 6 students,
which can be viewed as a random sample.

(a) Construct an appropriate cumulative distribution table.

(b) What is the probability that at least 2 of the 6 will give up in the first
two weeks?
(c) What is the probability that at least 2 of the 6 will not give up in the
first two weeks?

10. A campus finance officer finds that, for all parking tickets issued, fines are
paid for 78% of the tickets. The fine is 2 euro. In the most recent week, 620
parking tickets have been issued.

(a) Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the number of these tick-
ets for which the fines will be paid.
(b) Compute the mean and standard deviation of the amount of money that
will be obtained from the payment of these fines.

11. A customer service center in India receives, on average, 4.2 telephone calls
per minute. If X is the number of calls during a particular minute, then:

(a) Describe the cumulative distribution function of X.

(b) What is the probability of being called at least 3 times in a particular
minute?

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12. Records indicate that, on average, 3.2 breakdowns per day occur on an urban
highway during the morning rush hour:

(a) Find the probability that on any given day there will be fewer than 2
breakdowns on this highway during the morning rush hour.
(b) Find the probability that on any given day there will be more than 4
breakdowns on this highway during the morning rush hour.

13. An insurance company holds fraud insurance policies on 6000 firms. In

any given year the probability that any single policy will result in a claim is
0.001. Find the probability that at least 3 claims are made in a given year.
(HINT: Use the Poisson approximation to the binomial distribution).

14. A company receives a shipment of 16 items. A random sample of 4 items

is selected, and the shipment is rejected if any of these items proves to be
defective.

(a) What is the probability of accepting a shipment containing 4 defective

items?
(b) What is the probability of accepting a shipment containing 1 defective
items?
(c) What is the probability of rejecting a shipment containing 1 defective
items?

15. A bank executive is presented with loan applications with 10 people. The
profiles of the applicants are similar, except that 5 are minorities and 5 are
not minorities. In the end, the executive approves 6 of the applications.
If these 6 approves are chosen at random from the 10 applicants, what is
the probability that fewer than half of the approvals will be of applications
involving minorities?

16. A researcher suspected that the number of energy drinks drunk by EDEM
students in a day during final examinations might depend on the number
of tests a student had to take on that day. The table below conducted by
Quality Department shows joint probabilities, estimated from a survey:

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 Number of tests (X)
Number of drinks (Y )
0 1 2 3
0 0.07 0.09 0.06 0.01
1 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.01
2 0.06 0.07 0.14 0.03
3 0.02 0.04 0.16 0.04

(a) Compute the probability distribution function of X. Obtain the mean

number of tests taken by students on that day.
(b) Compute the probability distribution function of Y . Obtain the mean
number of drinks drunk by students on that day.
(c) Find and interpret the conditional probability distribution of Y , given
that X = 3.
(d) Compute the covariance between X and Y .
(e) Are number of drinks and number of tests independent of each other?

17. The jurisdiction of a rescue team includes emergencies occurring on a stretch

of river that is 4 miles long. Experience has shown that the distance along
this stretch (measured in miles from its northernmost point) at which an
emergency occurs can be represented by a uniformly distributed random
variable over the range 0 to 4 miles. Then, if X denotes the distance (in
miles) of an emergency from the northernmost point of this stretch of river,
its probability density function is as follows:

f (x) = 0.25, for 0 < x < 4,

f (x) = 0, otherwise.

(a) Draw the probability density function.

(b) Compute and draw the cumulative distribution function.
(c) Find the probability that a given emergency arises within 1 mile of the
northernmost point of this stretch of river.
(d) The rescue team’s base is at the midpoint of this stretch of river. Find
the probability that a given emergency arises more than 1.5 miles from
that base.

18. The incomes of all families in a particular suburb can be represented by

a continuous random variable. It is known that the median income for all

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 families in this suburb is 60000 euro, and that 40% of all families in the
suburb have incomes above 72000 euro.

(a) For a family chosen at random, what is the probability that its income
will be between 60000 and 72000?
(b) Given no further information, what can be said about the probability
that a randomly chosen family has an income below 65000?

19. A salesperson receives an annual salary of 6000 euro plus 8% of the value
of the orders she takes. The annual value of these orders can be represented
by a random variable with a mean of 600.000 euro and a standard deviation
of 180.000.

(a) Compute the mean of the salesperson’s annual income.

(b) Compute the standard deviation of the salesperson’s annual income.

20. Let the random variable Z follow a standard normal distribution. Compute:

(a) P (Z < 1.2).

(b) P (Z > 1.33).
(c) P (Z > −1.7).
(d) P (Z > −1).
(e) P (1.2 < Z < 1.33).
(f) P (−1.7 < Z < 1.2).
(g) P (−1.7 < Z < −1).

21. Let X ∼ N (0.2, 0.0025).

(a) Compute P (X > 0.4).

(b) Compute the probability that X is greater than 0.15 and less than 0.28.
(c) Compute the probability that X is less than 0.1.
(d) The probability is 0.2 that X is greater than what number?
(e) The probability is 0.05 that X is in the symmetric interval.

22. A contractor has concluded from his experience that the cost of building
a luxury home is a normally distributed random variable with a mean of
500.000 euro and a standard deviation of 50.000.

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 (a) What is the probability that the cost of building a home will be between
460.000 and 540.000 euro?
(b) The probability is 0.2 that the cost of building will be less than what
interval?
(c) Find the shortest range such that the probability is 0.95 that the cost of
a luxury home will fall in this range.

23. A furniture manufacturer has found that the time spent by workers assem-
bling a particular table follows a normal distribution with a mean of 150
minutes and a standard deviation of 40 minutes.

(a) The probability of 0.9 that a randomly chosen table requires more than
how many minutes to assemble?
(b) The probability of 0.8 that a randomly chosen table can be assembled
in fewer than how many minutes?
(c) Two tables are chosen at random. What is the probability that at least
one of them requires at least 2 hours to assemble?

24. A car-rental company has determined the probability that a car will need
service work in any given month is 0.2. The company has a 900-car fleet.

(a) What is the probability that more than 200 cars will require service
work in a particular month?
(b) What is the probability that fewer than 175 cars will need service work
in a given month?

25. Bags of some chemical produced by a company have impurity weights that
can be represented by a normal distribution with a mean of 12.2 grams and
a standard deviation of 2.8 grams. A random sample of 400 of these bags is
taken. What is the probability that at least 100 of them contain fewer than
10 grams of impurities?

26. Given an arrival process with λ = 1, what is the probability that an arrival
occurs in the first t = 2 time units?

27. A professor sees students during regular office hours. Time spent with stu-
dents follows an exponential distribution with a mean of 10 minutes. Com-
pute the probability that a given students spends

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 (a) fewer than 20 minutes with the professor.
(b) more than 5 minutes with the professor.
(c) between 10 and 15 minutes with the professor.

28. A random variable X is normally distributed with a mean of 100 and a

variance of 100, and a random variable Y is normally distributed with a
mean of 200 and a variance of 400. The random variables have a correlation
coefficient equal to 0.5. Compute the mean and variance of the random
variable W = 5X − 4Y .

29. An investor plans to divide 200.000 euro between two investments. The
first yields a certain profit of 10%, whereas the second yields a profit with
expected value 18% and standard deviation 6%. If the investor divides the
money equally between these two investments, compute the mean and stan-
dard deviation of the total profit.

30. A consultant is starting some work on three different projects. The expected
profits from these projects are 50000, 72000 and 40000. The associated
standard deviations are 10000, 12000 and 9000. Assuming independence
of outcomes, compute the mean and standard deviation of the consultant’s
total profit from these three projects.