ISE 500 Fall 2018

Assignment 3
Submitted by: Ananth Ramesh
USC ID: 9441892027
Email: ananthra@usc.edu
Date: 09/10/18
Due on 09/10/18 11:59 P.M.

1. Imagine that you are the manager of an engineering department that processes
requests for quotations for new designs. Your past experience indicates that you
receive 7 requests per month. What is the probability that you will receive more than 4
requests next month? The average time it takes one of your engineers to process such
a request is 30 hours, with a range of 20 to 60. How many engineers should you have
to be able to complete at least 90% of the work each month (everyone works 160 hours
per month)? (0.15 points) (Some of this needs to be simulated)

2. Who were Poisson and Dirichlet? (0.1 points)

Simeon Denis Poisson was a French Mathematician, Engineer and Physicist whose most
notable works include the generalization of Laplace’s second order partial differential
equation for potential (known as Poisson’s equation or the potential theory equation), his
memoirs on definite integrals and discussions of Fourier Series. The Poisson distribution in
probability theory is named after him.

Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was a German mathematician who made deep
contributions to number theory (including creating the field of analytic number theory), and to
the theory of Fourier series and other topics in mathematical analysis; he is credited with
being one of the first mathematicians to give the modern formal definition of a function. He
was in close contact with Poisson (who was his academic advisor during his time in Paris).

[Source: Wikipedia.org]

3. You have three suppliers (A,B,C) for a specific part and you purchase equal numbers
from all three in random order. The parts are not marked for origin. Their defective
rates 0.3, 0.2 and 0. 1% respectively. You are looking at a defective part. What is the
probability that the part came from A? (0.1 points)
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Assignment 03

Since there are 3 suppliers A,B and C, the share of parts supplied by each supplier is 33% or
0.33 (and the parts are not marked with which supplier they are procured from).

Defective rates are 0.3, 0.2 and 0.1% for A,B and C respectively, and let “d” be the defective
part.

Probability of getting a defective part is given by,

P(total defective parts from supplier A,B,C) = P(Aᴒd) + P(Bᴒd) + P(Cᴒd) = P(d)

= 0.33*(0.3/100) + 0.33*(0.2/100) + 0.33*(0.1/100) = 0.00198 = 0.198%

Probability of defective part from supplier A is given by,

P(A|d) = [P(Aᴒd)] / P(d)] = (0.00099) / 0.00198 = 0.5 = 50%

4. Consider a communication source that transmits packets containing digitized speech.

After each transmission, the receiver sends a message indicating whether the
transmission was successful or unsuccessful. If a transmission is unsuccessful, the
packet is resent. Suppose a voice packet can be transmitted a maximum of 8 times.
Assuming that the results of successive transmissions are independent of one another
and that the probability of any particular transmission being successful is p, determine
the probability mass function of the number of times a packet is transmitted. Then
obtain an expression for the expected number of times a packet is transmitted.
(0.2 points)

Let a successful transmission be denoted by ‘S’ and failure to transmit be ‘F’.

Let X denote number of trials (discrete random variable) to test if transmission is successful
or not.

For X=1, p(1) = {S} = p, where ‘p(X=x)’ defines the probability mass function of the discrete
random variable X.

Similarly, for X=2, p(2) = {FS} = (1-p)p, where (1-p) denotes the probability of failure occurring
before success ‘p’.

It can be extended to ‘x’ values, for X=x, p(x) = (1-p)x-1 *p

ISE500 Fall 2018
Assignment 03

Therefore, the probability mass function for x=8 is given by,

p(8) = (1-p)7*p

The exp0ression is given by,

p(x) = { [(1-p)x-1*p, for x=1,2…..7]

[(1-p)7*p+(1-p)8]

or [0, otherwise] }

5.

(0.1 points)

a) To find number of different crews possible, we can choose any 3 out of 20 (order is not
important). Therefore, there are

20C3 ways = 20! / (3!) * (20-3)! = 1140 ways

b) By excluding the best machinist, we can choose 3 out of the remaining 19 machinists,
which is done by,

19C3 ways = 19! / (3!) * (19-3)! = 969 ways

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Assignment 03

c) We can solve this by first finding out the crews which don’t have any of the top ten
machinists and then subtracting it from the total number of crews possible. Choosing the
crew from the bottom 10 machinists can be done by,

10C3 ways = 10! / 3! * (10-3)! = 120 ways

d) Since there are a total of 1140 possible crews (from (a)) and 969 crews do not have the
best machinist in them (from (b)), the probability that the best machinist will not work that
night is given by,

P(best machinist not working that night) = no. of crews without best machinist / total
number of crews = 969 / 1140 = 0.85 = 85%

6. Ten people are playing Black Jack (2 cards down for each). The dealer is using two
decks. You will be the first to receive the first face up card. Your two down cards are a
2 and a 7. What is the probability that your face up card will be a face card (Jack,
Queen, or King)? Suppose it is not one of these, what is the probability that the next
person’s face up card will be a face card? (0.2 points)

Since there are 2 decks there are total 104 cards, of which 20 cards are already dealt to the
10 people.

There are 12 face cards in each deck so the total face cards in both the decks are 12*2 = 24
face cards.

I have a 2 and a 7 face down and I will receive the first face up card.

Probability of me getting a face card as the first face up card,

P(face card as face up card) = 24 face cards / 102 cards = 24/102 = 0.235 = 23.53%

(Since I already have 2 and 7)

The probability of the next person getting a face card as their face up card if I don’t get it in
the first attempt is a dependent probability (it depends on whether I get the first face card or
not).

Now the deck is reduced by 1 card since I didn’t get a face card.
ISE500 Fall 2018
Assignment 03

P(face card as the second face up card) = 24 face cards / 101 cards = 24/101

= 0.237 = 23.76%

7. There are 1000 different components in the system that your department has just
designed. The objective is that for each of the systems that you deliver to a customer,
it should have a probability of 0.999 of functioning properly. Your system is such that
at most 8 components can be bad for it to still function. What must be the maximum
probability for each of your components to fail for you to achieve your objective?
Assume that all the probabilities are independent and equal to each other. (0.25 points)

8. Select some data that are publicly available. Look for something that has an n >= 30.
Select a distribution that you are familiar with and that can model the data well.
Describe your findings. (0.15 points)

9. Both the triangular and beta distributions are used in project management to model the
time that it takes to perform an activity. If you have 5 successive activities, simulate the
total completion of these activities with each of those distributions. Estimate the
duration of these tasks by considering the worst, best and most likely outcomes. The
choice of activities is up to you. (0.25 points)