Introduction to Probability

Tutorial 3
Week 3

1. A student has to sit for an examination consisting of 3 questions selected randomly from a list of 100
questions. To pass, he needs to answer all three questions. What is the probability that the student
will pass the examination if he knows the answers to 90 questions on the list?

2. An item of clothing is picked at random from one of two drawers in a dark room. The rst drawer
contains 6 socks and 6 ties, and the other contains 2 socks and 4 handkerchiefs. What is the
probability that the item comes from the rst drawer if it turns out to be a sock?

3. Suppose it is known that 1% of the population suers from a particular disease. A blood test has
a 97% chance of identifying the disease for diseased individuals, but also has a 6% chance of falsely
indicating that a healthy person has the disease.
(a) What is the probability that a person will have a positive blood test?
(b) If your blood test is positive, what is the chance that you have the disease?
(c) If your blood test is negative, what is the chance that you do not have the disease?

4. The weather on a particular day is classied as either cold, warm or hot. There is a probability of
0.15 that it is cold and a probability of 0.25 that it is warm. In addition, on each day it may either
rain or not rain. On cold days there is a probability of 0.3 that it will rain, on warm days there is a
probability of 0.4 that it will rain, and on hot days there is a probability of 0.5 that it will rain. If
it is not raining on a particular day, what is the probability that it is cold?

5. You have two coins, a fair one with probability of heads 12 and an unfair one with probability of
heads 31 , but otherwise identical. A coin is selected at random and tossed, falling heads up. How
likely is it that it is the fair one?

6. Show that n n−1 n−1

. Can you provide an interpretation of this equality?




k = k + k−1

7. In a series of 1000 light bulbs, 2% are defective. What is the probability that among 20 bulbs bought,
there are 2 faulty ones?

8. A menu has 5 appetizers, 3 soups, 7 main courses, 6 salad dressings and 8 desserts. In how many
ways can a full meal be chosen? In how many ways can a meal be chosen if either an appetizer or a
soup is ordered, but not both?

9. In how many ways can 6 people sit in 6 seats in a line at a cinema? In how many ways can the 6
people sit around a dinner table eating pizza after the movie?

1
10. Are the following statements true or false?
(a) If a fair coin is tossed three times, the probability of obtaining two heads and one tail is the
same as the probability of obtaining one head and two tails.
(b) If a card is drawn at random from a deck of cards, the probability that it is a heart increases
if it is conditioned on the knowledge that it is an ace.
(c) The number of ways of choosing ve dierent letters from the alphabet is more than the
number of seconds in a year.
(d) If two events are independent, then the probability that they both occur can be calculated
by multiplying their individual probabilities.
(e) It is always true that P (A|B) + P (A0 |B) = 1.
(f) It is always true that P (A|B) + P (A|B 0 ) = 1.
(g) It is always true that P (A|B) ≤ P (A).