ACTIVITY #2

The probabilities that a customer will buy 1,2,3,4, or 5 items in a grocery store are
3/10, 1/10, 1/10, 2/10, and 3/10, respectively. What is the average number of items
that customer will buy?

Solution:
STEPS SOLUTION
1. Construct the
probability NUMBER OF PROBABILITY
distribution for ITEMS X P(X)
the random 1 3/10
variable X
representing the 2 1/10
number of items 3 1/10
that the
customer will
4 2/10
buy. 5 3/10

This is the distribution table of number of items in a grocery that a customer will buy,
the designated probabilities or outcomes aligned in every item, where in item 1 the
probability is 3/10, while in items 2 and 3 is 1/10, and in item 4 is 2/10, like in item 1
the probability of item 5 is 3/10.

STEPS SOLUTION
2. Multiply the value NUMBER PROBABILITY X. P(X)
of the random OF ITEMS X P(X)
variable X by the
corresponding
1 3/10 3/10
probability. 2 1/10 2/10
3 1/10 3/10
4 2/10 8/10
5 3/10 15/10

This table represents the product of number of items X and the probability of P (X).
Thus, if we multiply 1 to 3/10 the product will be 3/10 since 1 is whole number
automatic its denominator is 1, then if 2 is multiply to 1/10 its product is 2/10 because
if we multiply the 2 to 1 its product is 2 the denominator will be automatically 1, while
in item 3 the product is 3/10 also like in item 1 because the probability of P (X) is 1/10,
in the next row; item 4 multiply to 2/10, first we will multiply 4 by 2 the product s 8
then 1 multiply to 10 the product I 10 that is why the product is 8/10. Finally, on item
5 the product is 15/10 because if we multiply 5 to 3 the product is 15 and 1 multiply to
10 the product is 10. The answer above was based in the rule of multiplying fraction to
whole number.
 NUMBER PROBABILITY X. P(X)
OF ITEMS X P(X)
1 3/10 3/10 STEPS
2 1/10 2/10 SOLUTION
3 1/10 3/10 3. Add the results obtained in Step 2.
4 31
∑ X . P ( X )= =3.1
2/10 8/10
5 10 3/10 15/10

This table represents the mean probability distribution of the number of items that the
customer will buy. We got the sum of X. P (X) by adding the numerator and we got
the sum of 31 since the denominators were all the same we don’t need to get their
least common denominator, we just need to copy the denominator 10 so the sum is
31/10, since we cannot predict it we need to divide 31 to 10 which will be the quotient
is 3.1

So, we therefore conclude that the average of items that the customer will buy in
grocery items is 3.1, we can see it through computing the discrete probability
distribution.