Tutorial Guide

Every week, there is a new lecture and a tutorial that covers material from the previous
week. Before going to a lecture, students are advised to go a tutorial reviewing what they
have learnt from the previous lecture and preparing for the next lecturer.
Tutorials are an integral part of developing skills in business statistics and data analytics.
Without practice, understanding of key concepts in this subject and implementation of key
techniques cannot be achieved. This will hamper the future study of other subjects, such as
finance and economics.
You should turn up to your tutorial – the one you have been allocated to. Rooms, including
Zoom ones, cater for only a certain quota of students so overcrowding occurs when people
just turn up to any tutorial. By turning up to a tutorial that you shouldn’t be at, you will be
disrupting the learning of students who have the right to be there. Tutorial staff can only
deal with and attend to a certain limited number of students. If you do wish to change your
tutorial, you must do so online via the MyStudent / OneStop Admin.
Please don’t ask the Business Statistics staff to change tutorials because they cannot make
those changes.
If you do prepare for tutorials, you will have several outcomes:
1. You can confirm your learning achievements.
2. You can amend your learning of topics that you may have minor misunderstandings.
3. You can identify where you need to spend more time reviewing.
4. Tutors can move through easier material that everyone is OK with more quickly.
and this means a chance to expand on more problematic areas and to have a better idea
what major you want to choose in the next year.
If you do not prepare, you will fall behind as the tutor will cater to those whom have
prepared. You will think that everything needs reviewing and start freaking out!
Remember, you should devote 6 hours per week to Business Statistics outside of the 3
hours face-to-face contact you have in the form of lectures and tutorials.
You should bring the following to tutorials:
1. Tutorial question sheet and your attempt at the answers to each question
2. Lecture notes and study notes
3. Textbook (optional)
4. Calculator
5. Pens/Pencils and Paper/Exercise book
Tutorial 3 in Week 4: Discrete Probability Distributions
Question 1. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Sydney is an authorised Rolls-Royce motor car dealer.
Due to its high-end market target, no sales for a week is not uncommon. The sales manager
Mr. Smyth has recorded the number of cars sold in a week and computed the corresponding
probability as follows.

Number of car sold 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Probability 0.08 0.11 0.13 0.20 0.25 0.15 0.05 0.02 0.01
1. What is the random variable here? Let X denote this r.v..
The r.v. X is the number of cars sold in a week.
2. Compute P(2< X ≤ 5).
Notice that 2 is not included. So
P ( 2< X ≤5 )=P ( X=3 )+ P ( X =4 ) + P ( X=5 )=0.2+0.25+0.15=0.6

3. Compute E( X)and Var (X ).

Denote outcomes by x 1=0 , x 2=1 ,… , x 9=8 .

9
μ X =E ( X ) =∑ x i P ( X =xi ) =0 × P ( X=0 ) +1× P ( X=1 ) +…+ 8× P ( X=8 )=3.24
i=1

9
2 2 2
σ 2X =Var ( X ) =∑ (x ¿ ¿ i−μ X )2 P ( X=x i )= ( 0−3.24 ) × P ( X =0 ) + ( 1−3.24 ) × P ( X=1 ) +…+ ( 8−3.24 ) × P ( X
i=1

4. Use Excel to plot the pdf and cdf of X . Hint: search “running total or cumulative sum
in Excel” in Google.

Cumulative probability
1.2

Probability 1
0.3 0.8
0.25
0.6
0.2
0.15 0.4
0.1
0.2
0.05
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Question 2. Given X ∼ Bin(n , p) with n=15 and p=0.5.

1. Compute P( X =10), using the pdf formula.
 15 !
P ( X=10 ; n=15 , p=0.5 ) = 15 0.510 ( 1−0.5 )15−10= 0.510 0.55=0.0916
( )
10 10 ! ( 15−10 ) !

2. Compute P( X ≥ 14), using the binomial table.

P ( X ≥14 ; n=15 , p=0.5 )=P ( X=14 ; n=15 , p=0.5 )+ P ( X =15 ; n=15 , p=0.5 )=0.000+ 0.000=0.000

3. Verify your answers using Excel.

0 in the function “BINOM.DIST” means the pdf is computed. If the function

“BINOM.DIST(B63,C63,D63,1)” is used instead of “BINOM.DIST(B63,C63,D63,0)”, cdf is
computed, i.e. P(X ≤ 14). Also, in Excel functions, 0 and 1 can be replaced by False and
TRUE, respectively.
4. Think about two questions that can be answered by question 2.1 and 2.2,
respectively.
Q1: There are 15 contestants participating in the TV game show called “Jeopardy!”. All
contestants are chosen randomly on street; suppose a person is a female with
probability 0.5 and is a non-female with probability 0.5. What is the probability that 10
contestants among the 15 are female? What is the probability that more than 14
constants are female, 14 included?
Q2: Tossing a fair coin 15 times. What is the probability that 10 tosses among the 15 are
heads? What is the probability that more than 14 tosses are heads, 14 included?

Question 3. Blackpink is a K-pop group who is giving an Australian tour. 30 VIP tickets will be
given to fans in Sydney for free in a lottery. These tickets are sponsored by Virgin Australia
(10 tickets), Toyota Australia (6 tickets), NSW government (5 tickets) and Warner Bros.
Australia (9 tickets). Kenneth Chan is a big and lucky fan of Blackpink and he won four
tickets. What is the probability that he has exactly three tickets sponsored by Toyota?
1. What is the random variable here?
The r.v. is the number of tickets that are sponsored by Toyota, among the 4 tickets that
Kenneth won.
2. Can we or can we not use binomial distribution to model the r.v.? Why.
Because the probability of success (the probability that a ticket is sponsored by Toyota)
is not independent across trials. For example, the first ticket chosen can be one
 6
sponsored by Toyota with probability . The probability that the second ticket is
30
5
sponsored by Toyota is , if the first ticket is sponsored by Toyota, because there are
29
29 tickets left in total, and 5 Toyota-sponsored tickets left in total. If the first ticket is not
6
Toyota-sponsored, the probability that the second ticket is Toyota-sponsored is ,
29
because there are 29 tickets left in total, but there are still 6 Toyota-sponsored tickets.
Apparently, the dependence across trials violates the independence assumption behind
binomial distribution. So we cannot use binomial distribution.

Question 4. Roll an unfair die with the following probability table. Define the random
variable X such that X =1 if 5 appears after a roll and X =0 otherwise.

Face 1 2 3 4 5 6
Probability 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.08 0.12 0.2
1. What distribution does X follow?
X ∼ Ber ( p=0.12) because we have a success if 5 appears and a failure if otherwise.

2. Compute E( X) and Var (X ).

μ X =E ( X ) =p=0.12 , σ 2X =Var ( X )= p ( 1− p ) =0.12× 0.88=0.1056

3. What is the probability of having two 5’s in 4 rolls? What new random variable is of
interest here? What distribution does this new r.v. follow?
The r.v. is the number of 5’s from rolling the die 4 times. Let Y denote this r.v. we have
Y ∼Bin (n=4 , p=0.12)

So P ( Y =2 ; n=4 , p=0.12 )= ( 42) 0.12 ( 1−0.12 )

2 4−2
=0.0669

Question 5. Roll a fair die. Define the random variable X to be the number that shows up
after a roll.
1. What distribution does X follow? What are the parameters for this distribution?
X ∼ DUnif (a=1 , b=6). a and b are the two parameters for the discrete uniform
distribution. a and b indicate the minimum and maximum value X can assume,
respectively.
2. Compute E( X) and Var (X ).
b−a+ 2 6−1+2
μ X =E ( X ) = = =3.5 ,
2 2
 2 ( b−a+ 1 )2−1 ( 6−1+1 )2−1
σ =Var ( X ) =
X = =2.9167
12 12
3. Compute P(1 ≤ X <4).
1 1
P(1 ≤ X <4)=P( X =1)+ P( X=2)+ P( X =3)=3 × =
6 2

Question 6. The call centre of NRL in NSW receives a customer call every 2.5 minutes on
average. Let X define the number of calls every 10 minutes.
1. If X is Poisson-distributed, what are the parameters for this distribution?
Because X denote s the number of calls “arrived” every 10 minutes, we need to
translate what is given into the time unit of 10 minutes. Knowing that 1 customer call
arrives every 2.5 minutes, we know every 10 minutes, there are 4 calls on average. So
X ∼ Poi( λ=4). Here λ=4 is the arrival intensity in 10 minutes, or the average number
of calls arriving in 10 minutes is 4.
2. Compute E( X) and Var (X ).

μ X =E ( X ) =σ 2X =Var ( X )=λ=4

3. What is the probability that the call centre receives 2 calls or less in 10 minutes?

40 e−4 41 e−4 4 2 e−4

P ( X ≤2 ) =P ( X=0 )+ P ( X =1 ) + P ( X=2 )= + + =0.2381
0! 1! 2!
4. What is the probability that the call centre receives at least 3 calls in 10 minutes?
P ( X ≥3 )=1−P ( X <3 )=1−P ( X =0 )−P ( X =1 )−P ( X=2 )=1−0.2381=0.7619