ISE500 Fall 2018

Assignment 12

Due on 11/19/18 11:59 P.M. Team Assignment

1. (0.5 Points)
You feel that p~, the probability of heads on a toss of a particular coin is either 0.45, 0.5
or 0.55. Your prior probabilities are P(0.45)=0.15, P(0.5)=0.8 and P(0.55)=0.05. You
toss the coin 3 times and obtain heads twice and tails once. What are the posterior
probabilities? You repeat the experiment and obtain the same result. What is the
posterior distribution after the second experiment? Could you have just tossed the coin
6 times and obtained the same result (assuming that the outcomes were the same)?
2. (0.5 points)
Suppose that λ represents the number of planes per minute landing at O’Hare airport in
Chicago during the hours 5 P.M. and 7 P.M. on a Friday night in June. Assuming that λ
can only take on 5 values, assess your prior distribution of λ. You are then told that
during a 30 second period in that interval 4 planes landed. Revise your prior distribution
without any calculations. Then revise your original distribution using Bayes’ Theorem.
What kind of conclusions can you draw from this exercise?
3. (0.5 points)
Using the spreadsheet that was uploaded with the 11/13 lecture, redo the
experiment with the following distribution and the following assumed prior
distribution. How effective were   your   samples   in   getting   closer   to   the   actual
distribution?

Actual distribution
P P(p)
0.010 0.20
0.012 0.30
0.017 0.39
0.020 0.11
Assumed Prior
Prior P(p)
0.010 0.400
0.012 0.300
0.017 0.170
0.020 0.130