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Example 1

Setting Tossing regular 6-faced dice.

Question
(a) If you toss one die, what’s the probability of obtaining an even
number?
(b) If you toss two dice, what’s the probability of obtaining a sum
of ten?

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Example 2

Setting You draw 5 cards from a regular deck of 52.

♠: 2, 3, ..., 10, J, Q, K, A
♥: 2, 3, ..., 10, J, Q, K, A
♦: 2, 3, ..., 10, J, Q, K, A
♣: 2, 3, ..., 10, J, Q, K, A

Question What’s the probability of obtaining a “full house”,

e.g., {K, K, K, 8, 8}?

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Example 3
(The Birthday Problem)

Setting There are n persons in a room.

Question
(a) What’s the probability that nobody has the same birthday?
(b) How large need n be for this probability to be < 50%?

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Example 4

Setting You toss two regular 6-faced dice.

Question
(a) What’s the probability that you obtain at least one “6”?
(b) What’s the probability that you obtain at least one “6”
provided that the two dice did not have identical outcomes?

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Example 5

Setting Ellen and Frank have a meeting. Let

E = {Ellen is late} and F = {Frank is late}.

Suppose P(E) = 0.1 and P(F ) = 0.3.

Question What’s the probability they can meet on time if

(a) E is independent of F ?
(b) P(F |E) = 0.5?
(c) P(F |E) = 0.1?

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Example 6
Ran out of time ... do as exercise at home

Setting You want to access a very secure vault in the basement

of a Swiss bank. To access the vault, 10 associate bank managers,
each holding onto a different key, must be present at the same time.
Suppose that, independently, each associate bank manager has a
10% chance of being absent.

Question What’s the probability you won’t be able to access

the vault?

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