STAT 4101/5101 Lab1

Bingxin Zhao

Question 1
Three beer drinkers (say I, II and III) are to rank four different brands of beer (say A, B, C and D)
in a blindfold test. Each drinker ranks the four beers as 1 (best), 2 (second best), 3 and 4.

• (a) Carefully describe the sample space S for the experiment

• (b) Assume that the drinkers can’t tell the difference between the beers, so that all orderings
all equally likely. After all of the beers are ranked, the total rank for each beer is calculated.
What is the probability that some beer will receieve total rank of 4 or less?

1
Stat 4101/5101 Bingxin Zhao

Question 1
Three beer drinkers (say I, II and III) are to rank four different brands of beer (say A, B, C and D)
in a blindfold test. Each drinker ranks the four beers as 1 (best), 2 (second best), 3 and 4.

• (a) Carefully describe the sample space S for the experiment

• (b) Assume that the drinkers can’t tell the difference between the beers, so that all orderings
all equally likely. After all of the beers are ranked, the total rank for each beer is calculated.
What is the probability that some beer will receieve total rank of 4 or less?

Solution:

For each drinker, there are 4!=24 ways to rank the beers. Since we have three beer drinkers (I, II
and III), we have 243 = 13824 total sample points.
{(1, 2, 3, 4), (1, 2, 3, 4), (1, 2, 3, 4)}
{(1, 2, 3, 4), (1, 2, 3, 4), (1, 2, 4, 3)}

Since we have three person, each beer can have three ranks. Then, there are two scenarios:
First, some beer receive total rank 3.

4 × (3!)3 = 63 = 864

Second, some beer receive total rank 4.

4 × 3 × (3!)3 = 2592

The probability that some beer will receive total rank of 4 or less:

864 + 2592
= 0.25
13824

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Stat 4101/5101 Bingxin Zhao

Question 2
Suppose that n indistinguishable balls are to be placed in N distinguishable boxes so that each
distinguishable arrangement is equally likely. If n ≥ N, show that the probability no box will be
empty is given by:
( Nn−−11)
P(no empty box) =
( NN+−n− 1
1 )

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Stat 4101/5101 Bingxin Zhao

Question 2
Suppose that n indistinguishable balls are to be placed in N distinguishable boxes so that each
distinguishable arrangement is equally likely. If n ≥ N, show that the probability no box will be
empty is given by:
( Nn−−11)
P(no empty box) =
( NN+−n− 1
1 )
Solution:
n = 4 balls and N = 3 boxes. I use 4 ’0’ and 2 ’|’ to represent the arrangement.

• 0000||

• 0|00|0

• 0|0|00

• 00|0|0

• |00|00

n −1
There are ( NN+− 1 ) ways to arrange the ’0’ and ’|’.
n −1
To achieve ’no box will be empty’, there are ( N −1) different ways.
Then, we obtain the probability no box will be empty is given by

( Nn−−11)
P(no empty box) =
( NN+−n− 1
1 )

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Stat 4101/5101 Bingxin Zhao

Question 3
A telephone number consists of ten digits, of which the first digit is one of 1, 2, . . . , 9 and the others
can be 0, 1, . . . , 9. What is the probability that 0 appears at most once in a telephone number, if all
the digits are chosen completely at random?

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Stat 4101/5101 Bingxin Zhao

Question 3
A telephone number consists of ten digits, of which the first digit is one of 1, 2, . . . , 9 and the others
can be 0, 1, . . . , 9. What is the probability that 0 appears at most once in a telephone number, if all
the digits are chosen completely at random?
Solution:
There are two different scenarios. First, 0 appears once. Second, there is no 0 in the telephone
number.
The probability that 0 appears once is

1 9
9× × ( )8
10 10

The probability that there is no 0 in the telephone number is

9 9
( )
10

Hence, the probability that 0 appears at most once in a telephone number is

1 9 9
9× × ( )8 + ( )9 = 0.774841
10 10 10

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