Probability & Statistics : Assignment - A

1) Five dots are placed at random on a 8×8 grid in such a way that no cell contains
more than one dot. Specify an appropriate sample space and determine the
probability that no row or column contains more than one dot.

2) A group of five people simultaneously enter an elevator at the ground floor. There
are 10 upper floors. The persons choose their exit floors independently of each
other. Specify an appropriate sample space and determine the probability that
they are all going to different floors when each person randomly chooses one of
the 10 floors as the exit floor. How does the answer change when each person
chooses with probability12the 10th floor as the exit floor and the other floors
remain equally likely as the exit floor with a probability of 1/18 each.

3) You and two of your friends are in a group of 10 people. The group is randomly
split up into two groups of 5 people each. Specify an appropriate sample space
and determine the probability that you and your two friends are in the same
group.

4) An electronic system has four components labeled as 1, 2, 3, and 4.The system

has to be used during a given time period. The probability that component i will
fail during that time period is fi for i= 1, . . . ,4. Failures of the components are
physically independent of each other. A system failure occurs if component 1
fails or if at least two of the other components fail. Specify an appropriate sample
space and determine the probability of a system failure.

5) You choose at random a point inside a rectangle whose sides have the lengths 2
and 3. What is the probability that the distance of the point to the closest side of
the rectangle is no more than a given value a with 0< a <1?

6) A random number is repeatedly drawn from 1, 2, . . . , 10. What is the

probability that not all of the numbers 1, 2, . . . , 10 show up in 50
drawings?

7) Twelve married couples participate in a tournament. The group of

24 people is randomly split into eight teams of three people each,
where all
 possible splits are equally likely. What is the probability that none of
the
teams has a married couple?

8) Three fair dice are rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the
three outcomes is 10 given that the three dice show different
outcomes?

9) In a high school class, 35% of the students take Spanish as a foreign

language, 15% take French as a foreign language, and 40% take at
least one
of these languages. What is the probability that a randomly chosen
student
takes French given that the student takes Spanish?

10) Fifty different numbers are arranged in a matrix with 5 rows and
10
columns. You pick at random one number from the matrix. Let A be the
event that the number comes from an odd-numbered row and B be the
event
that the number comes from the first five columns. Are the events A and
B
independent?

11) You are among N players that will play a competition. A lottery is
used to determine the placement of each player. You have an
advantage.
Two tickets with your name are put in a hat, while for each of the other
players only one ticket with her/his name is put in the hat. The hat is
well
shaken and tickets are drawn one by one from the hat. The order of
names
appearing determines the placement of each player. What is the
probability
that you will get assigned the nth placement for n = 1, 2, . . . ,N?

12) Bill and Mark play a series of games until one of the players has
won two games more than the other player. Any game is won by Bill with
probability p and by Mark with probability q = 1 − p. The results of the
games are independent of each other. What is the probability that Bill will
be the winner of the match?
 13) A family is chosen at random from all three-child families. What
is
the probability that the chosen family has one boy and two girls if the
family
has a boy among the three children? Use Bayes’ rule in odds form to
answer
this question.

14) An oil explorer performs a seismic test to determine whether oil

is
likely to be found in a certain area. The probability that the test indicates
the presence of oil is 90% if oil is indeed present in the test area and the
probability of a false positive is 15% if no oil is present in the test area.
Before the test is done, the explorer believes that the probability of
presence
of oil in the test area is 40%. Use Bayes’ rule in odds form to revise the
value of the probability of oil being present in the test area given that the
test gives a positive signal.