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Understanding Probability, Third Edition
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PART ONE
Probability in action
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Understanding Probability, Third Edition
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1
Probability questions
In this chapter, we provide a number of probability problems that challenge the reader to test
his or her feeling for probabilities. As stated in the introduction, it is possible to fall wide of
the mark when using intuitive reasoning to calculate a probability, or to estimate the order of
magnitude of a probability. To find out how you fare in this regard, it may be useful to try
one or more of these twelve problems. They are playful in nature but are also illustrative of
the surprises one can encounter in the solving of practical probability problems. Think
carefully about each question before looking up its solution. Solving probability problems
usually requires creative thinking, more than technical skills. All of the solutions to the
probability questions posed in this chapter can be found scattered throughout the ensuing
chapters.
Question 1. A birthday problem (3.1, 4.2.3)
You go with a friend to a football (soccer) game. The game involves 22 players of the two
teams and one referee. Your friend wagers that, among these 23 persons on the field, at least
two people will have birthdays on the same day. You will receive ten dollars from your friend
if this is not the case. How much money should you, if the wager is to be a fair one, pay out
to your friend if he is right?
Question 2. Probability of winning streaks (2.1.3, 5.10.1)
A basketball player has a 50% success rate in free throw shots. Assuming that the outcomes
of all free throws are independent from one another, what is the probability that, within a
sequence of 20 shots, the player can score five baskets in a row?
Question 3. A scratch-and-win lottery (4.2.3)
A scratch-and-win lottery dispenses 10,000 lottery tickets per week in Andorra and ten
million in Spain. In both countries, demand exceeds supply. There are two numbers,
composed of multiple digits, on every lottery ticket. One of these numbers is visible, and the
other is covered by a layer of silver paint. The numbers on the 10,000 Andorran tickets are
composed of four digits and the numbers on the ten million Spanish tickets are composed of
seven digits. These numbers are randomly distributed over the quantity of lottery tickets, but
in such a way that no two tickets display the same open or the same hidden number. The
ticket holder wins a large cash prize if the number under the silver paint is revealed to be the
same as the unpainted number on the ticket. Do you think the probability of at least one
winner in the Andorran Lottery is significantly different from the probability of at least one
winner in Spain? What is your estimate of the probability of a win occurring in each of the
lotteries?
Question 4. A lotto problem (4.2.3)
In each drawing of Lotto 6/45, six distinct numbers are drawn from the numbers 1, , 45. In
an analysis of 30 such lotto drawings, it was apparent that some numbers were never drawn.
This is surprising. In total, 30 6 = 180 numbers were drawn, and it was expected that each
of the 45 numbers would be chosen about four times. The question arises as to whether the
lotto numbers were drawn according to the rules, and whether there may be some cheating
occurring. What is the probability that, in 30 drawings, at least one of the numbers 1, , 45
will not be drawn?
Question 5. Hitting the jackpot (Appendix)
Is the probability of hitting the jackpot (getting all six numbers right) in a 6/45 Lottery greater
or lesser than the probability of throwing heads only in 22 tosses of a fair coin?
Question 6. Who is the murderer? (8.3)
A murder is committed. The perpetrator is either one or the other of the two persons X and Y.
Both persons are on the run from authorities, and after an initial investigation, both fugitives
appear equally likely to be the perpetrator. Further investigation reveals that the actual
perpetrator has blood type A. Ten percent of the population belongs to the group having this
blood type. Additional inquiry reveals that person X has blood type A, but offers no
information concerning the blood type of person Y. What is your guess for the probability that
person X is the perpetrator?
Question 7. A coincidence problem (4.3)
Two people, perfect strangers to one another, both living in the same city of one million
inhabitants, meet each other. Each has approximately 500 acquaintances in the city.
Assuming that for each of the two people, the acquaintances represent a random sampling of
the citys various population sectors, what is the probability of the two people having an
acquaintance in common?
Question 8. A sock problem (Appendix)
You have taken ten different pairs of socks to the laundromat, and during the washing, six
socks are lost. In the best-case scenario, you will still have seven matching pairs left. In the
worst-case scenario, you will have four matching pairs left. Do you think the probabilities of
these two scenarios differ greatly?
Question 9. A statistical test problem (12.4)
Using one die and rolling it 1,200 times, someone claims to have rolled the points 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, and 6 for a respective total of 196, 202, 199, 198, 202, and 203 times. Do you believe that
these outcomes are, indeed, the result of coincidence or do you think they are fabricated?
Question 10. The best-choice problem (2.3, 3.6)
Your friend proposes the following wager: twenty people are requested, independently of one
another, to write a number on a piece of paper (the papers should be evenly sized). They may
write any number they like, no matter how high. You fold up the twenty pieces of paper and
place them randomly onto a tabletop. Your friend opens the papers one by one. Each time he
opens one, he must decide whether to stop with that one or go on to open another one. Your
friends task is to single out the paper displaying the highest number. Once a paper is opened,
your friend cannot go back to any of the previously opened papers. He pays you one dollar if
he does not identify the paper with the highest number on it, otherwise you pay him five
dollars. Do you take the wager? If your answer is no, what would you say to a similar wager
where 100 people were asked to write a number on a piece of paper and the stakes were one
dollar from your friend for an incorrect guess against ten dollars from you if he guesses
correctly?
Question 11. The Monty Hall dilemma (6.1)
A game-show climax draws nigh. A drum-roll sounds. The game show host leads you to a
wall with three closed doors. Behind one of the doors is the automobile of your dreams, and
behind each of the other two is a can of dog food. The three doors all have even chances of
hiding the automobile. The host, a trustworthy person who knows precisely what is behind
each of the three doors, explains how the game will work. First, you will choose a door
without opening it, knowing that after you have done so, the host will open one of the two
remaining doors to reveal a can of dog food. When this has been done, you will be given the
opportunity to switch doors; you will win whatever is behind the door you choose at this
stage of the game. Do you raise your chances of winning the automobile by switching doors?
Question 12. An offer you cant refuse or can you? (9.6.3, 10.4.7)
The New York State Lottery offers the game called Quick Draw. The game can be played in
bars, restaurants, bowling areas and other places. A player chooses four numbers from 1 to
80. The lottery then randomly choose twenty numbers from 1 to 80. The payoffs on an one-
dollar bet are $55 for four matches, $5 for three matches, $2 for two matches and $0
otherwise. In November of 1997, the state lottery offered a promotion Big Dipper
Wednesday where payoffs on the game were doubled on the four Wednesdays in that
month. Is this a good deal for the player or just a come-on for a sucker bet?
The psychology of probability intuition is a main feature of some of these problems. Consider
the birthday problem: how large must a group of randomly chosen people be such that the
probability of two people having birthdays on the same day will be at least 50%? The answer
to this question is 23. Almost no one guesses this answer; most people name much larger
numbers. The number 183 is very commonly suggested on the grounds that it represents half
the number of days in a year. A similar misconception can be seen in the words of a lottery
official regarding his lottery, in which a four-digit number was drawn daily from the 10,000
number sequence 0000, 0001, , 9999. On the second anniversary of the lottery, the official
deemed it highly improbable that any of the 10,000 possible numbers had been drawn two or
more times in the last 625 drawings. He added that this could only be expected after
approximately half of the 10,000 possible numbers had been drawn. The lottery official was
wildly off the mark: the probability that some number will not be drawn two or more times in
625 drawings is inconceivably small and is of the order of magnitude of 109. This probability
can be calculated by looking at the problem as a birthday problem with 10,000 possible
birthdays and a group of 625 people (see Section 3.1 in Chapter 3). Canadian Lottery
officials, likewise, had no knowledge of the birthday problem and its treacherous variants
when they put this idea into play: They purchased 500 Oldsmobile cars from nonclaimed
prize monies, to be raffled off as bonus prizes among their 2.4 million registered subscribers.
A computer chose the winners by selecting 500 subscriber numbers from a pool of 2.4
million registered numbers without regard for whether or not a given number had already
appeared. The unsorted list of the 500 winning numbers was published and to the
astonishment of lottery officials, one subscriber put in a claim for two automobiles. Unlike
the probability of a given number being chosen two or more times, the probability of some
number being chosen two or more times is not negligibly small in this case; it is in the
neighborhood of 5%! The translation step to the birthday problem is to imagine that each of
the 500 Oldsmobile cars gets assigned a birthday chosen at random from 2.4 million
possible birthdays.
The Monty Hall dilemma which made it onto the front page of the New York Times in
1991 is even more interesting in terms of the reactions it generates. Some people
vehemently insist that it does not matter whether a player switches doors at the end of the
game, whereas others confidently maintain that the player must switch. We will not give
away the answer here, but suffice it to say that many a mathematics professor gets this one
wrong. These types of examples demonstrate that, in situations of uncertainty, one needs
rational methods in order to avoid mental pitfalls.a Probability theory provides us with these
methods. In the chapters that follow, you will journey through the fascinating world of
probability theory. This journey will not take you over familiar, well-trodden territory; it will
provide you with interesting prospects.
a
An interesting article on mistakes in reasoning in situations of uncertainty is K. McKean,
Decisions, decisions, , Discover, June 1985, 2231. This article is inspired by the
standard work of D. Kahneman, P. Slovic and A. Tversky, Judgment under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982.
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