MA1312 Assignment 01 (July 24)

Answer all the question. (All or only a selected number of question will be graded.) Write answers clearly, in
an organized manner, with justifications, and showing all your work. This is due on Thursday, August 02
by 4:00PM at 4th floor, Engineering Building. Write your tutorial class day and time on the front page. This
is an individual assignment and answers must be written individually.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
1) Three fair coins are tossed and the outcome from each coin has recorded.
a) Draw the sample space.
b) Draw the outcomes in each of the following events.
A - Getting exactly two same outcomes.
B - Getting at least one tail.
C - All three outcomes are same.
c) Calculate the probabilities for the events A, B and C.

2) According to the journal Chemical Engineering, an important property of a fiber is its water absorbency.
A random sample of 21 pieces of cotton fiber was taken and the absorbency on each piece was measured.
The following are the absorbency values:

21.41 20.72 21.81 19.29 22.43 20.17 23.71 19.44 20.50 18.92 20.33
19.25 21.77 22.11 19.77 18.04 21.12 23.24 18.71 22.85 23.00

a) Calculate the median for the data.

b) Calculate the sample mean.
c) Calculate the sample variance and the standard deviation.

3) A car-pooling study shows that the number of passengers, X in a car (excluding the driver) is likely to
assume the values 0,1,2,3 and 4 with probabilities given by the table.

a) Show that this is a legitimate probability mass function.

b) Find the cumulative distribution function of X.
c) Determine the probability of at least two passengers in a car.
d) Calculate
i. E(X)
ii. E(X2)
iii. Var(X)

4) According to Chemical Engineering Progress (November 1990), approximately 30% of all pipework
failures in chemical plants are caused by operator error. What is the probability that out of the next 20
pipework failures at least 10 are due to operator error?

5) Ten is the average number of oil tankers arriving each day at a certain port. The facilities at the port
can handle at most 15 tankers per day. What is the probability that on a given day tankers have to be
turned away?
6) The life, in years, of a certain type of electrical switch has an exponential distribution with an average
life of 2 years. If 100 of these switches are installed in different systems, what is the probability that
at most 30 fail during the first year? (Marks are given for all the steps)

7) A process for manufacturing an electronic component yields items of which 1% are defective. A
quality control plan is to select 100 items from the process, and if none are defective, the process
continues. Calculate the approximate probability of having 30 number of defective items.

8) If a certain machine makes electrical resistors having a mean resistance of 40 ohms and a standard
deviation of 2 ohms, what is the probability that a random sample of 36 of these resistors will have a
mean resistance of more than 41 ohms?

9) A manufacturer of sprinkler systems used for fire protection in office buildings claims that the true
average system-activation temperature is 130°F. A sample of 49 systems, when tested, yields a
sample average activation temperature of 131.08°F with a standard deviation of 1.5°F.

a) Does the data contradict the manufacturer’s claim at 1% significance level? (Marks are given for
all the steps)
b) Find the 99% confidence interval for true average system-activation temperature.

10) The thrust of an engine (y) is a function of exhaust temperature (x) in 0F when other important variables
are held constant. Consider the following data.

Y X
4300 1760
4650 1652
3200 1485
3150 1390
4950 1820
4010 1665
3810 1550
4500 1700
3008 1270

a) Find the correlation in between exhaust temperature and thrust of an engine.

b) State the estimated regression equation in the form of 𝑌̂ = 𝛼̂ + 𝛽̂ 𝑋.
c) Find the expected thrust of an engine when temperature is 15200F.
d) Interpret the meaning of the regression coefficient (β).