Unit 5

Probability Distribution

Unit Overview:
- Probability Distribution
- Expected Number
- Expectation/Fair Game
- Probability of Binomial Distribution
- Probability of Hypergeometric Distribution
- Continuous Probability Distribution for Normal Distribution
- Normal Approximation for Discrete Data
- Normal Approximation for Binomial Distribution

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Lesson: Introduction to Probability Distribution

Definitions:
__________________________ __________________________
- “X” (Captial letter X)
- a single value for each outcome in an experiment

__________________________ __________________________
- values separate from each other
- finite number of outcomes
- data is counted

__________________________ __________________________
- possible values of x are elements of real numbers
- infinite number of outcomes
- data is measured

Examples:
Classify each of the following random variables as discrete or continuous:
Random Variables Discrete OR Continuous

1) the number of phone calls made by a person

2) the length of time the salesperson spent on the telephone

3) a company’s annual sales

4) the distance from earth to the sun

5) the number of widgets sold by a company

__________________________ __________________________ __________________________outcomes of the distribution are equally

likely in any single trial
- the sum of the probability is one
Example:
Random Probability,
Variable, X P(x)
1
1 6

1
2 6

1
3 6

1
4 6

1
5 6

1
6 6

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____________________________________________________
- ( )
- predicted average of all possible outcomes of a probability experiment

To calculate probability distribution

1
( )

Examples:
Given the following probability distribution, determine the expected values:

(a)
Random
Probability,
Variable,
P(x)
X
5 0.3

10 0.25

15 0.45
(c)
( )
Random Probability,
Variable, X P(x)
1
1
(b) 6
Random Probability, 1
2
Variable, X P(x) 5
1
1 000 0.25 3
4
1
100 000 0.25 4
3
1
1 000 000 0.25 5
20
10 000 000 0.25 ( )

( )

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Lesson: Expectation / Fair Game

Definitions:
Probability in a Discrete Uniform Distribution:
( ) , where n is the number of possible outcomes in the experiment
Uniform Distribution Non-Uniform Distribution

____________________________________________________
- The expected outcome in a fair game is ZERO
- A game in which each player is not more likely to win than another
Fair Game Not a Fair Game

( ) 0 ( ) 0

Question Page 374 #2:

Explain whether each of the following experiments has a uniform probability distribution:
Experiment Uniform/Non-Uniform
Distribution

a) Selecting the winning number for a lottery

b) Selecting three people to attend a conference

c) Flipping a coin

d) Generating a random number between 1 and 20 with a

calculator
e) Guessing a person’s age

f) Cutting a card from a well-shuffled deck

g) Rolling a number (sum of the two dice) with two dice

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Example “GAMES”
Ex: You are playing a game with a deck of cards. You randomly chose a card. The following are the
results. If it is a face card, you win $10. If it is an even card, you lose $3. If it is an odd card, you lose $5.
What is the expectation for this game? (Assume Ace = 1 = odd)

Event Face Odd Even

Example “FAIR GAMES”

Ex: A die game cost $3 to play. If you roll an even number, you win double the value. If you roll an odd
number, you lose the value. Is this a fair game?

(Remember: If a game costs money upfront, then to be fair, the expectation has to have the same amount
as the cost of the game.)

Roll a die Random

Probability, P(x)
Variable, X

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Lesson: Probability of Binomial Distribution

Definitions:
Probability in a Binomial Distribution:
 __________________________ probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of
independent experiment
 2 possible outcomes only: “__________________________” or “__________________________”
 “Success”
 “Failure”
 1
 probability of each outcome remains constant throughout the trials (they are _______________________)

Probability in a Binomial Distribution:

( ) ( )

Expectation for a Binomial Distribution:

( )

Examples from Textbook Questions Page 385 #1:

Situations Binomial or not Binomial

a) a child rolls a die ten times and counts the number of 3s

b) the first player in a free-throw basketball competition has a free-

throw success rate of 88.4%. A second player takes over when
the first player misses the basket.
c) A farmer gives 12 of the 200 cattle in a herd an antibiotic. The
farmer then selects 10 cattle at random to test for infections to
see if the antibiotic was effective.
d) A factory producing electric motors has a 0.2% defect rate. A
quality-control inspector needs to determine the expected
number of motors that would fail in a day’s production.

Textbook Example Page 379 Example #1:

A manufacturer of electronics components produces precision resistors designed to have a tolerance
of 1 . From qualilty-control testing, the manufacturer knows that about one resistor in six is
actually within just 0.3% of its normal value. A customer needs three of these precise resistors. What
is the probability of finding exactly three such resistors among the first five tested?

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 Textbook Example Page 380 Example #2:
Tan’s family moves to an area with a different telephone exchange, so they have to get a new
telephone number. Telephone numbers in the new exchange start with 446, and all combinations for
the four remaining digits are equally likely. Tan’s favourite numbers are the prime numbers 2, 3, 5,
and 7.
a) Calculate the probability distribution for the number of these prime digits in Tan’s new
telephone number.

b) What is the expected number of these prime digits in the new telephone number?

Textbook Example Page 384 Example 3:

The Choco-Latie Candies company makes candy-coated chocolates, 40% of which are red. The
production line mixes the candies randomly and packages ten per box.
a) What is the probability that at least three candies in a given box are red?

b) What is the expected number of red candies in a box?

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Lesson: Probability of Hypergeometric Distribution

Definitions:
Hypergeometric Distribution:
- involves a series of __________________________ trials, each with success or failure as the only possible
outcomes
- outcomes doesn’t involve success or failure __________________________
- probability of success changes as each trial is made
- random variable is the number of successful trials in an experiment
- probability involves ____________________________________________________

( )( )
( ) ( )
( )

Example from Textbook Page 404 #1:

Which of these random variables have a hypergeometric distribution?
Random Variables Hypergeometric

a) the number of clubs dealt from a deck

b) the number of attempts before rolling a six with a die

c) the number of 3s produced by a random number generator

d) the number of defective screws in a random sample of 20 taken from

a production line that has a 2% defect rate

e) the number of male names on a page selected at random from a

telephone book

f) the number of left-handed people in a group selected from the

generate population

g) the number of left-handed people selected from a group comprised

equally of left-handed and right-handed people

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Example:
6 Jurors are needed from a pool of 8 men and 10 women.
a) Determine the probability distribution for the number of women on a civil-count jury selected.
b) What is the expected number of women on the jury?

Example from Textbook Page 401 Example 3:

A box contain seven yellow, three green, five purple, and six red candies jumbled together.
a) what is the expected number of red candies among five candies poured from the box?

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Example from Textbook Page 402 Example 4:
In the spring, the Ministry of the Environment caught and tagged 500 raccoons in a widerness area. The
raccoons were released after being vaccinated against rabies. To estimate the raccoon population in the
area, the ministry caught 40 raccoons during the summer. Of these 15 had tags.
Estimate the raccoon population in the widerness area.

Example:
A hat contains 20 names, 12 of which are female. If five names are drawn from the hat,
a) what is the probability that there is exactly one female name is drawn?

b) What is the expected number of female names?

Example:
What is the probability that a card game of 13 cards in hand continas six spades, four hearts, two
diamonds, and one club?

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Lesson: Introduction to Continuous Probability Distribution

__________________________ probability distributions:

- possible values of the random variable are any ____________________________________________________

- often represented by density graphs (curves)

Characteristics of the Normal Distribution

 It is __________________________ about the mean (median and mode are the same value).
 It is bell-shaped.
 The total area under the density curve equals __________________________
 When considering continuous distributions, we are most often interested in determining the
probability that a variable falls within a particular range of values
 The probability may be determined using the __________________________ under the curve

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In a normal distribution, the proportions of the data set found within one, two and three standard
deviations of the mean always were _____________ (within one standard deviation of the mean),
__________________ (within two standard deviations of the mean), and _________________ (within three standard
deviations of the mean). That is the 68-95-99.75 rule.

Even though the mean

and standard
deviation affect the
position and
shape of the
normal curve,
changing their
values does not
distort the areas
underneath the
normal density
function and as a result
does not distort the
proportions of
observations found
within these
regions nor the
probabilities
determined for these regions. It is the relative position of the boundaries of these regions, measured
in standard deviations from the mean, that are important and not the actual values themselves.

By calculating a __________________________, which “standardizes” our observations to the standard normal

distribution, we are determining the number of standard deviations that our observation is from the
mean and we can use a z-score table to measure the area under the curve.

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Example: Assuming that a normal distribution occurs in a situation, the mean is 14 and standard deviation is
4.5. Determine the probability for the random variable is less than 13.01

Step #1: Convert a particular normal distribution to the standard normal distribution by calculating the z-score

Step #2: Identify the area under the bell curve that is needed for the probability

Step #3: Refer to the Normal Distribution Table for the probability of a z-score that is

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Example: Assuming that a normal distribution occurs in a situation, the mean is 14 and standard deviation is
4.5. Determine the probability for the random variable is greater than 17.

Step #1: Convert a particular normal distribution to the standard normal distribution by calculating the z-score

Step #2: Identify the area under the bell curve that is needed for the probability

Step #3: Refer to the Normal Distribution Table for the probability of a z-score that is _______________

Step #4: Determine the probability

Example: Assuming that a normal distribution occurs in a situation, the mean is 14 and standard deviation is
4.5. Determine the probability for the random variables between 10 to 17 inclusively.

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Lesson: Normal Approximation and Normal Approximation for Binomial Distribution
Normal Approximation:

- use when model normal distribution for __________________________ data

(data set is __________________________)
(data falls into a symmetric unimodal bell shape)
(discrete data)
- use __________________________ __________________________ [treat discrete data as they are continuous
i.e. “60 students” will be treated as (5 5 60 5)

Example

A factory that makes chocolate covered peanuts packages them in a box. The number of peanuts in the
box is assumed to be normally distributed. They found that the boxes have a mean of 200 peanuts with a
standard deviation of 12. If a box has fewer than 190 peanuts it will be rejected by quality control. Also,
a box with more than 215 peanuts will result in excess costs to the company.

a) What is the probability that a box chosen at random will have exactly 200 peanuts in it?

b) What percent of the production would you expect to lie within acceptable values?

c) If your factory produces 200 000 boxes per shift, how many boxes would deemed rejects?

d) Comment on the quality control of your packaging process.

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Lesson: Normal Approximation for Binomial Distribution

 The Normal distribution can be used to approximate Binomial probabilities when n is large
and p is close to __________________________. In answer to the question
 the approximation should only be used when both _______________________and _______________________.
 ( )
 ( ) √

Example #1:

a) Which graph appears to have a normal distribution?

b) Which case meets the conditions required for normal distribution?

c) Calculate the mean and the standard deviation for normal approximation.

d) Determine the probability that the person passes the test using normal approximation.

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Example #2:

The bottle of Cepsi know that they have 42% of the market. At a booth, 80 people take the Cepsi
Challenge.

a) What type of distribution is the number of people who choose Cepsi?

b) Can a normal approximation be made?

c) What is the mean and standard deviation of the approximate normal distribution?

d) What is the probability that the number of people that will choose Cepsi is between 25 and 40?

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