Probability and Statistics

Tutorial 3
23th August 2019
2. A particular professor is known for his arbitrary grading policies. Each paper receives a
grade from the set {A, A−, B, B−, C, C−}, with equal probability, independently of other papers.
How many papers do you expect to hand in before you receive each possible grade at least
once?
3. Consider a sequence of independent tosses of a biased coin at times t = 0, 1, 2, . . .. On
each toss, the probability of a ’head’ is p, and the probability of a ’tail’ is 1 − p. A reward of
one unit is given each time that a ’tail’ follows immediately after a ’head.’ Let R be the total
reward paid in times 1, 2, . . . , n. Find E[R] and var(R)
4. A candy factory has an endless supply of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black, white,
and violet jelly beans. The factory packages the jelly beans into jars in such a way that
each jar has 200 beans, an equal number of red and orange beans, an equal number of
yellow and green beans, one more black bean than the number blue beans, and three more
violet beans than the number of white beans. One possible color distribution, for example,
is a jar of 50 yellow, 50 green, one black, 48 white, and 51 violet jelly beans. As a marketing
gimmick, the factory guarantees that no two jars have the same color distribution. What is
the maximum number of jars the factory can produce?
5. You write a software program over and over, and each time there is probability p that it
works correctly, independent of previous attempts. What is the variance of X, the number of
tries until the program works correctly?